Matthew Lynn Matthew Lynn

The true cost of Labour’s Budget is impossible to calculate

Rachel Reeves had little good news for British businesses (Getty)

No sombre music accompanied Rachel Reeves’s Budget, nor was there a reading from Corinthians. Yet, those details aside, one point is surely clear: Labour’s first Budget in 14 years was a requiem for entrepreneurial Britain. The four decades from the Thatcher reforms of the early 1980s, that turned the UK into one of the best places, at least in Europe, to start and build a company, are now officially over. Britain’s economy will be a lot poorer thanks to the Labour government.

In Labour land, entrepreneurs might as well not exist

True, the Budget might not have been quite as bad as some of the advanced speculation suggested. Even so, no one should be under any illusions.: this Budget was a full-on attack on entrepreneurs and small businesses.

The rate of Capital Gains Tax they will have to pay, even on the first £1 million they make from selling a company they have sweated blood to create, has been hiked considerably.

Matthew Lynn
Written by
Matthew Lynn
Matthew Lynn is a financial columnist and author of ‘Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis’ and ‘The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031’

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