It would seem to be self evident that the U.K. needs a successsful business base.
I read recently that much of the Left likes the idea of increasing borrowing, and funding it by printing money. That would increase the demand for ‘real’ goods, which without an increase in production will lead to heavy inflation. Increasing borrowing is not only difficult (it will lead to higher interest rates as our creditworthyness decreases), but it is patently obvious (at least to me) that we shouldn’t be living beyond our means
A lot of the left is into ‘tax and spend’ – they like the idea of ‘the state’ spending money, and funding their pet schemes, such as yet more money on welfare. A pleasant indulgence. They seem less interested in spending money on real priorities, like defence.
The real problem is the ‘tax’ component. There seems to be an attitude that the private sector is a ‘cash cow’ – you can just take more and more of ‘their money’ and spend it on ‘us’. Maybe it is more than the ‘cash cow’ concept – taking their money is maybe a punishment for being successful, a product of greed and envy.
Remember of course that much of ‘the left’ have only worked in the public and volontary sector, plus a few that are independantly wealthy and privileged, but keep it quiet. So they know little about business and have little interest.
If you look at the ‘far right’ I am reallly not sure what is their attitude to business? I suspect they are relatively inclined to just ignore it, and focus on other issues such as immigration.
Sensible people know that we have a crisis with business. High energy costs, increased minimum wage, cheaper overseas production….
Moreover high personal tax rates disincentivises those that we need to work hard creating and expanding businesses.
We lack economic resilience, we imagined that ‘globalisation’ would mean that manufactured products (and food) would always be available from around the world, and at cheap prices.
Recent international events make it clear that we need to be closer to self sufficient in many sectors. Being too dependant on the U.S. is not wise (eg the F35 plane). We need to go it alone on many things, but then also collaborate with what are likely to be our close long term allies – we share a culture with Western European coutries, I think we should reinforce our links to Eastern European countries (good people in Poland and Ukraine for example), and the Old Commonwealth countries and some of the New Commonwealth (eg Canada, Australia, New Zealand).
We need to strengthen our prescence in many sectors, defence, marine engineering and ship building, steel production and so on.
It seems to me that the only Party that has any taste for this is the Conservative Party. Traditionally they have run the economy well, for Labour to then abuse it…..
In part we need to ‘free up’ the private sector, the business sector. Go for ‘small government’, reduce the state interference in business whereever possible – reduce the rules and regulations.
Civil servants create jobs, roles and committees for civil servants. They then create policies and procedures – many of which are laborious but essentially ‘tick in the box’ exercises for businesses.
A friend wanted to open a shop – needed an ‘approval’ visit from a local authority – got told the first appointment available was in a month’s time. He’d been working his socks off to get the place open, needed the incoming cash flow, but just had to sit on his hands for a month…..
All the political parties should reflect on the fact that it is business that creates wealth, that enables the funding of social policies – we are close to killing this goose that creates the golden eggs…….
Leave a Reply