John B Sheffield

Career Commercial Radio/Music Management. Live Theatre, Movies/Film Shorts,TV Drama/Documentary's, Soul Music. West Ham & London Broncos RL.

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Brilliant Badenoch, Four Pence Off Gherkins and a Chancellor Left Exposed

John Healey stood up today promising "breathing space now, fresh hope for the future." When Kemi Badenoch rose to respond, she dismantled the claim with a single line: this is a budget for getting by, not for getting on. In eleven words, she exposed what fifty minutes of Treasury rhetoric had tried to obscure. A government managing decline and calling it relief.

Badenoch's sharpest moment was also her simplest. Healey had announced £100 energy payments, an extension of the electricity VAT cut, and business rates relief, dressed as a serious response to household pressure. Badenoch's verdict: "Instead, we got 4p off gherkins." The line lands because it exposes the absurdity. A country facing diesel at £2 a litre and gas storage at a third full heading into winter was offered a rounding error and told to be grateful. Badenoch did not need to shout to make the gap visible. She simply held the promise next to the policy and let the distance speak.

She was equally precise on the fiscal claims underneath the theatre. Healey insisted his Budget met the government's own fiscal rules and left £15 billion of headroom by 2029/30, the same confident arithmetic his predecessor Reeves offered before her own numbers moved against her. Badenoch was unimpressed, and rightly so. Headroom quoted four years out, in a Budget delivered against a backdrop of £14 billion in additional forecast debt interest this year alone, is not a cushion. It is a hope dressed up as a forecast, and Badenoch's refusal to accept it at face value was the correct instinct from an opposition that has watched this exact promise fail once already under this government.

Her challenge on enterprise was the one Healey will find hardest to answer honestly. He pointed to new money through the National Wealth Fund and the British Business Bank, business rates changes, and tax incentives for company founders, and called it a plan to unleash British enterprise. Badenoch's response cut straight through the announcement to the arithmetic underneath it: none of it touches the underlying costs already crushing employers. A tax incentive for founders means little to a business still absorbing last year's National Insurance rise, this year's minimum wage increase, and a wholesale energy bill that has doubled since the Iran crisis began. You cannot unleash enterprise with one hand while taxing its costs with the other, and Badenoch was the only person in the chamber prepared to say so plainly.

Badenoch also went after breathing space itself as a concept, asking how much room Britain genuinely has left when borrowing costs, debt interest and the overall tax burden are all moving in the same direction at once. It is the right question, because breathing space implies slack somewhere in the system, and nothing in Healey's own figures suggests any exists. A Chancellor claiming headroom while debt interest rises by £14 billion in a single year is not managing a surplus of room. He is managing its absence, and hoping nobody checks the working.

What made the performance outstanding was its discipline. Badenoch did not need to invent a crisis or raise her voice to find one. Sharp, witty, and relentlessly on point, she read Healey's own numbers back to him and let the contradiction do the damage itself. A government promising fresh hope, offering 4p off gherkins, and calling £15 billion of headroom security rather than wishful thinking has handed the opposition leader everything she needs to make the case against it. Badenoch made that case, and made it look easy.

[romaissa @RomaissaTahar]

For the sake of all the blood in Gaza, and the blood of all the innocent people you have killed, I want to see you humiliated and brought to justice.

[The English Crusader @andrewc44104127]

🚨 BREAKING NEWS

Andy burnham has said £30 billion will be used to regenerate asylum seeker accommodation.

GET HIM OUT NOW!!!!

[Paul @Paulrestore]

Facts!

[Kevin Edger @KEdge23]

Andy Burnham’s face after being destroyed by Tory Kemi Badenoch again.

He is clearly out of his depth. If Labour think that’s it for another year, they’re very mistaken. We’re heading towards bankruptcy, we’re all broke.

[London Broncos @LondonBroncosRL]

Check out the fan survey at the link below! 

https://t.co/5t6W0mVeN4 

#wearelondon #relentlesspursuit

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

Is that it?

John Healey had a big job to do cleaning up Labour’s mess. This Budget fails to do it.

Britain is overspent, overborrowed and overtaxed. This Budget does not come close to meeting the moment.

My full response👇

[aileen B 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @AileenBart60380]

TRAITOROUS SCUM🖕

[John B Sheffield @jaybs]

Liebour know best - haha

[Sedd @SeddSezz]

What an absolute worm.

John Healey has allocated £150m of taxpayers’ money in the Budget towards more large asylum sites!

He neglected any and all mention of this in his speech! It’s only in the document!

Labour finds money for migrants while all our other costs rise and our country crumbles.

Will we be forced to fund migrants against our will in perpetuity?

[John B Sheffield @jaybs]

LOL! Ask his own MP’s, what a Complete FLOP he is! Perhaps a mayor! Nothing Else!

[Manchester News MEN @MENnewsdesk]

Tell us what you think https://t.co/I3Y6UwlrtD

[Conservatives @Conservatives]

John Healey failed his own test.

[Roger Gall @Shambles151]

Please RT this until the worst crime of the 21st century - i.e. the world's leaders use of the word GENOCIDE - NOT to end Israel's obscene MASS-MURDER of tens of thousands of innocent civilians - but to allow it to continue - IS FINALLY ENDED.

[Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno]

Sorry to say this:

But the incredible surge for Palestinian-led parties in Israel is a victory from which they will not recover.

It is likely to provoke a mighty backlash in Jewish Israeli society, with dire consequences.

[GPC @GPC_Globall]

🚨 BREAKING:

The odds of Trump being removed from office in October 2026 have risen to 99.6%.

[Irene 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧🇮🇱🇺🇲👑🚜🚜🚜 @HakunaMatata26C]

And this sets the tone for John Healey's useless budget. Rachel Reeves was useless and now this one is proving to be the same.
What a bloody joke!

[John B Sheffield @jaybs]

#Budget2026 The Rev Ed Davey on his feet again! Speaking to an empty church, who would want to listen to him! #libdems

[Marcus Agrippa @AgrippaSPQR]

“Free movement had allowed, in my view, the undercutting of wages…I saw evidence of it”

Burnham 2019

Burnham is the very opposite of a conviction politician.

He stands for nothing and no one except himself.

#BurnhamOut

[Jewish Voice for Peace @jvplive]

Today, Israelis are voting for their next prime minister. But don’t be fooled. Regardless of who wins the election, Israeli apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians will continue, because the Israeli government is rooted in settler colonialism and racism.

[The National @ScotNational]

NEW: More than 20,000 people have signed a petition calling for a public inquiry into the UK Government's complicity in the Gaza genocide

[John B Sheffield @jaybs]

netanyahu Old Man - The 🤡 - He’s FINISHED!

[Rabbi Jeff @RabbiJeffx]

BREAKING: Netanyahu issues an 𝗔𝗟𝗔𝗥𝗠𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗘𝗠𝗘𝗥𝗚𝗘𝗡𝗖𝗬 𝗪𝗔𝗥𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚, claiming Israel’s election is being 𝗥𝗜𝗚𝗚𝗘𝗗 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗦𝗧𝗢𝗟𝗘𝗡, with Hamas potentially involved as well.