Rodney Forster

Today’s monologue from The Times at One with Andrew Neil on Labour and business. @TimesRadio Back tomorrow 1pm. In the run up to last year’s general election Labour wooed business hard. It worked. The Tories were no longer seen, with good reason, as the party of business. Private enterprise wanted a change.  Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, in more moderate mode than only a few years before, seemed to be saying all the right things.  The more gullible in business and finance even started to believe Rachel Reeves would know what she was doing.  They were wrong — and the honeymoon is long over, smashed in the car crash that was Chancellor Reeves’ first Budget last October. Recriminations have now set in. Former boss of Marks & Spencer told Times Radio yesterday that we were now ‘at the edge of a crisis.’   James Dyson of the eponymous vacuum cleaners says Labour is out to punish those who create wealth and jobs. The Chairman of Asda complains Labour is taxing ‘everything in some way, shape or form’ adding for good measure ‘I think there’s more gloom than we’ve seen in a long time.’   The head of Next thinks that worse is yet to come.  It already has. Jim Ratcliffe says his massive energy company, Ineos, will no longer invest in Britain because it now has one of the most ‘unstable fiscal regimes in the world.’ All investment in UK energy has been halted. But 3 billion pounds has been allocated for investment in America.  It’s not just the scale of taxes that has scared away Ratcliffe. It’s the constant chopping and changing.  As is often the case, what is wrong with Britain today started under the last Tory government. Back in May 2022 then Chancellor Rishi Sunak introduced a windfall tax on energy company profits. Fair enough. They were making money hand over fist after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spiked energy prices.  It was meant to be temporary and set at 25% on top of existing profit taxes. But Jeremy Hunt whacked it up to 35%. And Rachel Reeves couldn’t resist taking it to 38% and extending it to 2030  North Sea operators now face a 78% tax rate on their endeavours — among the highest in the world. So why bother. Ratcliffe has decided he won’t – and skedaddled to America.  This deserves more coverage than it’s had. Business investment in Britain is the lowest in the G7. We’re 28th out of 31 in the OECD. Only Slovenia, Hungary and Latvia do worse.  Rachel Reeves’ job was to lift us off the bottom and put rocket boosters under business investment. Instead, in her first shambles of a Budget she’s just made things worse. She still spouts pro-business vacuities. But business is no longer listening. Companies remember she promised no major tax rises to get elected — and broke that promise big time in her first Budget.  She then promised that was a one-off. She would not be back for more tax. But business knows she is coming back for a lot more in her second Budget in November.  Business also sees what the various hopefuls are saying in the contest for Labour deputy leader. There is nothing business friendly about their utterances. Business senses that’s a more accurate representation of Labour’s real views than the Starmer-Reeves bromides. In recent weeks we’ve started to stress about the risk of the bond markets turning against us because of the scale of our debt and deficits. But perhaps the more imminent danger facing Britain is that there could be a lot more Ratcliffes coming round the corner.

Interdiction: 40% increase in “disruptions”, including arrests and seizure of financial assets, to immigration gangs in the past 12 months, including a large seizure of boats on the Bulgarian border in July and August. The News You Won't See In The @DailyMail Or On @GBNEWS.