OPINION
Labour live in a fantasy bubble (Image: PA)
The Independent Business Network of family businesses, which I chair, has published a report on the High Street and the current government failure to understand the importance of family businesses and shops to our economy and community. Around 85% of British businesses are family-run, ranging from sole traders to large companies. They are the backbone of the economy, employing more people than any other in the private sector, linked to their community and stimulating innovation and the creative disruption from which economic growth springs.
They are also the vital part of our nation most ignored by politicians, Whitehall and the media, those who prefer instead to deal with foreign-owned multinationals represented by the CBI and public sector institutions, represented by trade unions. A classic example of the value of these backbone family businesses are the shops and hospitality outlets on the high streets of our towns and villages, vital but neglected by successive governments and worse still, their very existence threatened by the current government.
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The high street is under attack as never before. There is a perfect storm of the anti-capitalist, anti-enterprise policies of what is the most Marxist government the UK has had to put up with since the 1940s and who are making many of the same mistakes as of that administration.
The combination of over-regulation of employment law, the taxing of employment via national insurance and the hike in the minimum wage will lead to a retreat of enterprise and investment, an upward pressure on inflation and increasing unemployment, as businesses ration workers and close down.
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This process, which has already started, will lead to a downward spiral of lower tax take, higher tax rates, less jobs, fewer businesses, lower quality of life and so on. It is a recipe for a repeat of the stagflation of bygone years, of previous Labour governments.
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When combined with unnecessarily high energy bills because of the establishments’s obsession with Net Zero, this adds up to the antithesis of economic growth, instead increasing public debt and a centralised and overweening state which George Orwell would recognise.
Not since the 1970s has the UK been in such an economically precarious position. Not since the 1940s have we been so close to “bankruptcy”. Having an unacceptable level of debt which we are unable to service without depressing the economy and at rates which are unsustainably high.
The High Street is a bell weather of the economy, the Canary in the cage, the health indicator of family run businesses. Family businesses, are the backbone of the economy and also include the innovators and disruptors who engender growth.
This government is anti-family in many ways. The family stand between freedom and Marxist state control. Until the family, in all its manifestations is eliminated, the Marxist state cannot dominate. It is no coincidence that family businesses are under threat as never before.
Across the country, even in prosperous towns, we see boarded up shops and charity shops as never before. This not merely a function of online sales. Many high street businesses, even niche and small operate on line activity as well.
In my home town of Harrogate a tailor exports to the USA and beyond with a successful on line presence while a tobacconist export huge quantities of curated stock to China, the Middle East and beyond.
The problem is the burden of government. High taxes mean low profit and therefore lower investment. Over-regulation is a huge burden of time and effort on business people and depresses the desire to employ workers.
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An overweening state exacerbates this and kills innovation and growth. The Canary is being suffocated. The government are in a fantasy bubble and do not get the real world of our towns and their high streets.
They are in the “Crisis? What crisis?” mode of the 1970s. Eventually the bubble will burst and our “other world” politicians will be swept away.
John Longworth is a businessman and entrepreneur, Chairman of the Independent Business Network of family businesses and a former MEP
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