If you listened to Treasury ministers this spring you'd think the good times were back. Britain, they say, was the fastest-growing economy in the G7 in the first quarter of 2026. It's a nice line for a press conference. It is also doing an enormous amount of heavy lifting to distract you from what is actually happening to your pay packet.
0.6% Is Not a Miracle
Let's be fair and accurate: the economy did grow by 0.6% in the first quarter, and for that quarter it was the strongest in the G7. Good. But one decent quarter does not undo years of stagnation, and the forecasters who matter are still pencilling in weak growth for the rest of the year. A single quarter is a headline, not a recovery. Treating it as proof the plan is working is exactly the kind of complacency that got us here.
The Stealth Tax You Didn't Vote For
Here is the bit ministers don't put on the leaflet. The personal allowance — the amount you can earn before income tax kicks in — is frozen at £12,570 and due to stay frozen until 2030/31. Every year your wages rise a little to keep pace with prices, and every year more of that money is dragged into tax. Workers cross into the higher-rate band who were never meant to be there. Pensioners on modest incomes are pulled into paying income tax for the first time in their lives.
This is called fiscal drag, and it is a tax rise by stealth. No minister has to stand up and announce it. The freeze does the work quietly, year after year, while they boast about not raising the headline rates. It is one of the largest revenue raisers in modern memory, and it is taken from working people who are already stretched.
Inflation Is Coming Back
And the squeeze isn't over. With conflict in the Middle East pushing oil prices up since the start of the year, inflation is forecast to climb again, with warnings that energy bills and food prices will follow. A summer VAT gimmick on a few family days out does not touch the sides of that. It is a sticking plaster designed to be announced, not a plan to make the country better off.
What Reform UK Would Do
Reform UK would lift the income tax threshold to £20,000, taking millions of the lowest-paid out of income tax altogether and leaving more in the pockets of the people who earn it. We would go after the waste — the consultants, the quangos, the projects that deliver nothing — rather than reaching deeper into your salary.
You judge a government not by the line it spins on a good quarter, but by whether ordinary families feel better off. By that test, this one is failing.