𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

I spend most of my week talking to people who run businesses, and the message I hear is always the same. They want to grow. They want to take on more staff. They want to give a young graduate their first proper job. And every time, Labour make that harder. Next week’s Budget will make it harder still. We already know the shape of it, because Labour have shown us who they are. Labour raise taxes. They did it under Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, and they will do it under Andy Burnham and John Healey. It does not matter who is in Downing Street or who holds the red box – the instinct never changes.

The difference this time is that Labour have boxed themselves into a corner, having promised not to raise taxes on working people, then raised them anyway. They have run out of big levers they can pull without breaking yet another promise in public. So they have turned to the small ones instead.

That is what this Budget is shaping up to be. It will not bring one big tax rise you can see coming. It will bring dozens of small ones, buried in consultations, technical notes and the small print that most people never read. A new charge here, a tighter rule there, an allowance frozen somewhere else. Each one is designed to slip through unnoticed, but together they add up to a squeeze from every possible direction.

Businesses feel that squeeze first, and they feel it hardest. So many small firms don’t have an army of lawyers or a tax department, but are often led by a small team of hard-working people who already work evenings and weekends to keep the doors open. Every new form, every new deadline and every new charge comes out of that person’s time and that person’s margin.

Labour need the money because they have dug themselves a hole and refuse to stop digging. The welfare bill keeps climbing, with more people are signed off work. Deep down Labour know this cannot go on, but they will not take the hard decisions to fix it. So instead of getting welfare under control, they go back to the same place they always go. They go back to the people who work, and to the businesses that employ them.

On top of every new charge, Labour have piled a mountain of employment red tape. Their Employment Rights Act makes it riskier and more expensive to take someone on. Business owners tell me plainly that they now think twice before hiring. Many of them are not hiring at all. The people who lose out the most are are the young people looking for their first job, the graduates sending out application after application. So many businesses I speak to want to be part of the solution. They want to train people, invest and grow. But you cannot ask firms to create jobs if we continue to tax them harder each year and bury them in rules. That is what Labour are doing.

The Conservatives would take a different path. We would repeal the job-destroying measures in Labour’s Employment Rights Act, so that hiring stops being a gamble. We would halve employer National Insurance for under-25s, so that it is cheaper and easier for a business to give a young person their first start. And we would get the welfare bill under control, so that the people who work are no longer asked to pay for those who could work but do not.

That is the choice. Labour will carry on raiding businesses and working people, one sneaky tax at a time, because they cannot bring themselves to say no to more spending. We would back the people who build businesses, create jobs and keep this country running. John Healey has one chance next week to change course. He should cut taxes on the businesses that create jobs, scrap the red tape that stops them hiring and finally face up to the welfare bill. Sadly, nothing Labour have done so far suggests he will.