“I want to lead the most pro-growth, pro-business Treasury our country has ever seen”. That’s what chancellor Rachel Reeves told business leaders at a Rolls-Royce plant near Derby before the election. After Wednesday’s Budget, some of those executives must be wondering whether they misheard. Deciphering a Budget often involves reading the small print. Not this time.
Small companies and entrepreneurs don’t have time to lobby ministers: they are too busy building the future. We are in an era of career politicians, where few have experience of business or science and few have created a single job which wasn’t taxpayer funded. The exceptions — Michael Heseltine, Jeremy Hunt — prove the rule. Under Starmer, Labour ministers have valiantly and robotically started to utter the phrase “partnership with business”.