If you run a business you will know the pain of not being heard by politicians, of the weight of the tax axe hanging over you. You will know the frustration of dealing with more red tape — all imposed by people who just don’t get it. The solution is for those of us who do ‘get it’ to step up.
Steel matters, it’s one of the building blocks of a functioning economy, and that is precisely why it can’t be left to Ministers with little experience of the real world and even less of running a business.
Over the next few years things are only likely to get worse. Labour will continue to borrow huge sums, because they don’t understand that someone has to be willing to buy all the debt they issue. Like in the 1970s, the markets will demand ever more in return for that borrowing.
Every hour of every day, Britain relies on the kindness of strangers. Unbeknownst to most on the Government benches, our national debt now stands at close to £2.9 trillion, equivalent to over 93 per cent of our GDP and nearly three times the Government’s annual tax take.
2025 was the year Labour killed jobs. This year may well prove the year they kill the high street. Businesses are aching for a government that understands them, and that is precisely what we are building.
Britain’s entrepreneurial spirit is not broken although many feel crushed by this government. I’m optimistic that the strength of our millions of small businesses and the ambition of our young people to create new ones will make our country rise again.
If Labour force through the Bill this week, the next Conservative government will repeal all of its job-destroying and union militant boosting measures.
We understand why people get up in the morning to put their time, energy and capital on the line – taking risk to create growth for the economy and wealth and greater self-reliance from the state for themselves and their families.
When your own ideological allies are pleading with you to stop, it should be a moment for reflection.
Labour have been squandering a golden opportunity. The sands of the international trade system built in the 90s are shifting considerably. It is obvious that newly nimble countries like our own have an enormous advantage over the sclerotic bureaucratic blocs like the EU.
The number one ask from businesses is for a ceasefire in this war on private enterprise, and for the Chancellor to now rule out further tax raids – something she was happy to do once but is now suspiciously loath to repeat.
His warning would be simple and direct: if you make it harder to employ people, don’t be surprised when fewer people get employed.
A future Conservative government will not merely slow the leftward ratchet of socialism; we will stop it – starting with dismantling the Employment Rights Bill.
In business, I had to work harder to justify a small increase in advertising spend than does the Chancellor vast, debt-fuelling expenditures. We need individual departmental Estimates Day debates.
In ten days-time, a man who spent three quarters of his working life in London, and most of that time in politics, will step into Downing Street and try to convince the country that he is an outsider. He’ll presume to tell us about the Makerfield test, Manchesterism, and “doing things differently.”