Another bad day for Nick, 30

“Sometimes when I go to bed at night, I think that if I were a young man I would emigrate.” -

James Callaghan to Cabinet, 17 November 1974

Will no-one think of Nick, 30?

Rachel Reeves certainly hasn’t. Her Budget delivered yet another sound walloping to the long-suffering hero of the social contract meme.

Check out the list:

• As a higher rate taxpayer Nick’s income tax up is up £658 as a result of the three-year freeze to income tax and National Insurance thresholds.

• This builds on the hit from last year’s lowering of NI thresholds, which already cost him £300.

• As a recent graduate his student loan repayments are up £239 as a result of the freeze to repayment thresholds.

• Nick’s dream of being able to save up for a house is bit further away, with a 2% increase in the tax on savings income.

• Nick’s rent up is likely to go up too - as the OBR point out, the government’s new ‘landlord tax’ is very likely to be passed on to Nick, because it “will likely reduce the supply of rental property over the longer run. This risks a steady long-term rise in rents”

As Nick doomscrolls on the train on the way in to work from his rented shoebox, he may not be heartened by the headlines:

• “Reeves spares 110 council houses worth over £2m from mansion tax” …

• “Families on benefits can be better off than those earning £70k” …

• “Reeves eases benefits rules for teenagers with ADHD”

Indeed, following the various policy decisions in the Budget spending on non-pensioner welfare spending will increase by 41% over this Parliament¹.

Nick sometimes wonders whether he should ask for a 41% salary increase too.

No wonder so many of Nick’s pals are off to warmer places². ONS have revised up figures for emigration - it turns out that 650,000 more British people have emigrated than ONS previously thought over the last couple of years. Of the nearly 1m British emigrants over the last four years, most are Nick’s age³.

Meanwhile, the people arriving tend to earn significantly less than Nick does.

Poor old Nick. We might all miss him if he goes. The Treasury most of all. Perhaps we should cut the guy a break?

1. From £62.5bn in 2024/25 to £88.2bn in 2030/31. (From OBR Table 5.8: Welfare spending)

2. One of Nick’s uni mates is now in Dubai, apparently “working as a Content Aggregator for a memecoin”. Nick also wonders what this really means. He certainly doesn’t seem to be paying much tax.

3. 68% of gross emigration is from people aged 16-34 and 99% of net emigration (ONS, Long-term international migration: Table 7a)