The Great Westminster Kite Festival - Budget Edition

18th November 2025

The spectacle of Westminster's budget season has once again descended into farce, resembling less a sober exercise in fiscal planning and more a kite festival on a blustery day.

Ministers and Treasury officials have taken to the skies with a dazzling array of policy kites, each one floated briefly before being yanked down in panic or allowed to drift off into the ether.

The public, meanwhile, is left craning their necks, wondering which of these colourful contraptions will actually land in the Chancellor's red box and which will simply vanish over the horizon.

The income tax kite was the most dramatic of the lot. Launched with solemn warnings about fiscal responsibility, it soared briefly before collapsing in spectacular fashion.

Traders were left rattled, MPs were left dazed, and the Chancellor insisted the nosedive was all part of a carefully choreographed routine. The mansion tax kite followed, fluttering briefly above Hampstead Heath before disappearing once someone pointed out that half the Cabinet might be personally liable.

Pension reform was floated ominously above the heads of retirees, only to be hastily reeled back in when the grey vote threatened to cut the string altogether.

Other kites were more fanciful. The so‑called exit tax was designed to prevent the wealthy from flying their own kites abroad, but it became hopelessly entangled in red tape and drifted off toward Dublin.

The taxi tax was rumoured to hover over Uber drivers, though no one could confirm whether it was real or simply a shadow cast by the Treasury's imagination.

And looming over everything was the spending squeeze kite, a giant black shape blocking out the sun and reminding everyone that "fiscal discipline" usually translates into fewer pothole repairs and more council headaches.

Commentators have been quick to weigh in on the spectacle. Economists describe it as toytown policymaking, markets call it expensive performance art, and the public dismisses it as a circus without popcorn.

Each kite is launched with solemnity, each collapse explained away as strategic, and each reversal leaves households, councils, and businesses wondering how they are supposed to plan when the fiscal weather changes by the hour.

The winners of this festival are obvious: kite manufacturers, lobbyists, and headline writers, all of whom thrive on the endless cycle of speculation.

The losers are equally clear: anyone trying to balance a household budget, draft a council spending plan, or run a small business in the face of shifting tax rumours. For them, the Treasury’s kite‑flying is not entertainment but a source of anxiety, undermining confidence and raising borrowing costs with every gust of speculation.

As the closing ceremony approaches, the Chancellor assures us that order and control have been restored. Yet the sight of shredded kites littering Downing Street tells a different story.

The Budget may eventually be written in ink, but for now it feels as though it is being drafted in pencil, erased in panic, and rewritten in invisible ink. The great Westminster kite festival has given us spectacle, confusion, and no shortage of satire, but precious little certainty about the fiscal future.

All will be revealed on 26 November 29 2025 - The Big Budget Kite Shoot down.