Voted for Change, Got a Rebrand
Spring Budget. Fuck the Tories. Oh Wait—That Was Labour.
🧾 An Unofficial Break-Up Letter
This wasn’t the piece I thought I’d lead with. But some betrayals are too loud to ignore—and too familiar to stay silent about. The Budget is dropping. I’ve already read the breakup text.
“It’s Not Fair, and I Think You're Really Mean”
I didn’t think I’d be writing this. Honestly, I wanted to love you. I still want to love you.
I thought we had something real. You said all the right things. You called, checked in, and made me feel seen, heard, even wanted. You told me I mattered. That things would change. That this time, it would be different.
But now I’m sitting here, staring at the Spring Budget like it’s a breakup text, wondering how the hell we got here.
You said you’d fight for me. But now I watch you schmooze billionaires, slash public services, and echo Tory rhetoric with slightly softer vowels. And what do I get in return? Austerity with a red rosette. A gentle pat on the head while the safety net below me vanishes.
It’s giving gaslight. It’s giving betrayal.
It’s giving Lily Allen’s “Not Fair” on loop in my kitchen at 2 am with a glass of cheap red and a half-eaten Greggs bake.
Because here’s the thing: I didn’t vote for a vibe. I voted for a government. I voted for care, for safety, for transformation.
I voted for someone who’d climax with me, not just finish on my back and roll over.
But all you do is TAKE.
Take trust. Take public funding. Take working-class pride and turn it into a press release.
And that’s what makes it “Not Fair”.
The Spring Budget: All Cuts, No Cushion
So, here’s what just happened: Chancellor Rachel Reeves — Labour’s so-called iron lady of economics — delivered the Spring Budget like a corporate downsizer on a deadline. The verdict? Cuts, cuts, and more cuts. Because apparently, the best way to fix a struggling economy is to strip it for parts.
Here’s the hit list:
🔪 Civil Service
10% chopped from admin budgets
10,000 jobs gone
A tidy £1.5 billion in “savings” — but who’s left to run the show?
🔪 Disability Support
£5 billion cut from welfare
Disability benefits like PIP? Reassessed, restricted, reduced
People with chronic illness now need to prove they’re still struggling — again
🔪 Public Services
Up to 7% sliced from departmental budgets
No new taxes. No safety nets. Just “efficiency savings” — Whitehall-speak for ghosting the services people actually rely on
The justification?
“Financial stability.” “Fiscal responsibility.”
Translation: make it look neat on paper, no matter the cost in real life.
But let’s be honest: stability for whom?
Austerity Didn’t Raise Me—Public Services Did
Let me tell you something personal. I’m not writing this because I want to bash Labour. I’m writing this because I am exactly the kind of person Labour once fought for—and I'm tired of watching that version of the party slowly vanish.
I grew up in one of those working-class, lower-middle-class suburbs you can find dotted across London and the Southeast. Not flashy. Not posh. But proud. Tight-knit.
The local comprehensive I went to? It used to be rated “Inadequate” until Labour transformed it under the academy system. That school became “outstanding”. I studied for my GCSEs in the local library—free, warm, quiet, safe. I spent weekends at the youth centre, where I first found and fell in love with the arts, discovered entrepreneurship, and learned how to lead, how to listen, and how to build things from scratch.
The community centre? That was our village square. Young mums with toddlers, pensioners playing dominoes, lads arguing about Arsenal—it was all happening there. It was a place that made everyone feel seen.
And now? These very spaces are on the chopping block again.
The Real Cost of Cuts
These weren’t “nice-to-haves.” They were the infrastructure of care.
Youth centres kept us off the streets and on the right track.
They offered structure, purpose, and somewhere to be.
They taught us how to meditate, how to collaborate, how to exist with difference.
Now?
We have boys in bedsits being radicalised by YouTube algorithms, stabbing each other in parks, or disappearing into systems that will never return them whole.
70% of youth services were cut during the last wave of austerity.
That’s not a stat. That’s a generation.
Community centres were lifelines—especially for the elderly.
They were close to home, warm in winter, and familiar.
When someone didn’t show up for a while, we’d notice.
They made early interventions possible—social, emotional, and medical.
Now we see pensioners wandering shopping malls just to keep warm.
We see loneliness turning colds into crises.
We see people slipping through cracks that didn’t used to be there.
And we’ll pay for it. In ambulance callouts. In hospital beds.
In grief we’ll pretend is inevitable.
Libraries weren’t just for books.
They were free Wi-Fi before we had smartphones.
They were revision halls, escape rooms, after-school sanctuaries.
Without them? The gap between rich and poor widens.
Here’s the part they don’t put in the spreadsheet:
Councils are already in crisis.
Many rely heavily on central government funding.
When that dries up, it’s the “non-essential” services that go first.
The youth centres. The libraries. The places where people live, even if they don’t pay rent there.
So when Labour talks about “efficiencies,”
When they promise £1.5bn in civil service cuts,
When they quietly signal up to 7% cuts across departments—
Know this:
They’re not trimming the fat.
They’re carving away the social contract.
Reflection
Middle Management Labour: The Party That Cancels Brainstorms
Labour today isn’t a party of vision — it’s a party of protocols.
It used to be radical, unapologetic, and on the front lines of resistance. Now it books Teams meetings.
Once it shouted with the people. Now it drafts statements “noting their concerns.”
It’s the political equivalent of middle management:
That person in the office who means well, but somehow always makes the team worse.
They cancel the team brainstorm because “now’s not the time for disruption.”
They bring in a new filing system no one needs, just to show they’re “driving progress.”
They speak fluent HR — all “stakeholder value” and “strategic alignment” — but choke when asked what they actually believe in.
They want to be liked by everyone and end up inspiring no one.
They nod seriously in meetings, make small adjustments, and yet refuse to dream.
They’ll update the slide deck while the building burns.
They’ll draft a press release about climate targets, but won’t block new drilling.
They’ll tinker with the wording on your eviction notice, but not stop the eviction itself.
And it’s not even malicious. That’s the saddest part.
They’re not evil. They’re just... beige.
Useful. Predictable. Safe.
Dead behind the eyes.
They’ll never break your heart — but only because they never tried to love you in the first place.
And look — middle managers serve a function.
They keep things moving.
But in a time like this — when we need rupture, imagination, renewal — Labour just keeps the lights on.
They file the paperwork. They manage expectations.
They show up to the revolution in a lanyard and ask for the agenda in advance.
This isn’t leadership. It’s logistics.
They don’t fail loudly. They fail quietly.
By choosing competence over courage.
By trading conviction for focus groups.
By becoming the party of making-do, just-bear-with, and better-than-the-Tories.
And I’ve tried to stick around. I’ve really tried.
But every time I hope for fire, they hand me a spreadsheet.
Every time I dream of something bigger, they email me a link to the feedback form.
So maybe it’s time I said it:
🎵 "Fuck what I said, it don't mean shit now..."
🎵 "Fuck all your promises, they don't mean jack now..."
🎵 "You thought you could keep me 'round? Guess what?..."
🎤 Fuck it. I don’t want you back.
P.S. If this piece stirred something in you — confusion, disappointment, recognition — share it with someone else who’s been politically ghosted.
Someone who believed, hoped, maybe even voted... only to be left on read.