It was the middle-aged man with the furrowed brow whose ashen face and pained expression really did it for me. “Lovely day, isn’t it?” I said sarcastically as I ordered a coffee.
It was blowing a gale outside and the rain was horizontal – a perfect metaphor for the conditions in which British businesses are operating under this hapless government. It had been barely 48-hours since Rachel Reeves delivered her Budget but the beleaguered barista had seen enough.
“This weather kills trade stone dead,” he said. But before long he revealed the real reason for his troubled demeanour.
“There is just no incentive anymore. I work all hours to operate a business at huge cost but what’s the point? The Budget killed it. The incentive has gone.
“I am seriously thinking of selling up and moving. I’d like to up sticks to Dubai. At least the weather would be better.”
The man – mid 50s at a guess – runs an independent coffee shop in Uckfield, an unassuming town of 15,000 in East Sussex. But it could easily have been anywhere in Britain.
His message was loud and clear: after the financial crisis of 2008, Covid, rising inflation, wages, and energy prices, running a business and employing people has been tough at the best of times but Labour is sucking the life out of hard work and ambition, hammering the strivers to reward the shirkers.
It’s enough to drive anyone to drink – albeit something a little stronger than caffine.
Businesses on Britain’s high streets are struggling (Image: Getty)
The grim reality for hundreds of thousands operating on decaying high streets up and down the country is they have been clobbered with National Insurance, wage, and business rates increase in what amounts to a triple blow to the solar plexus.
The stratospheric costs now associated with operating – wherever that is – are now so great it is almost impossible to make any money. And most business owners see no future in high streets dominated by ubiquitous charity shops, betting shops, and vape shops.
Increasing rents coupled with economic uncertainty has left many, as the coffee shop owner so succinctly put it, with simply no incentive to carry on.
In last week’s socialist Budget Ms Reeves unleashed a £30 billion package of tax rises, a huge bulk of which is to pay for rising welfare payments.
That move was a craven attempt to placate dissenting left-wing Labour MPs who remain resentful at those who get up, work hard, and make money for themselves and others.
The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates spending on state handouts will be £16bn a year higher in 2029 than was forecast in March.
Ms Reeves removed the two-child benefit cap after a backbench revolt by snarling MPs like Neil Duncan-Jordan, who wants to raise the top rate of income tax to 50%, after jettisoning welfare reforms earlier this year.
It means Britain’s benefits bill is set to rise by £73.2bn to £406.2bn in the next five years.
Is it any wonder there are so many anguished faces on the high street when taxes and bumper welfare payments show whose side Ms Reeves is really on.
In Britain under Labour many now genuinely believe hard work no longer pays.
Not only is this government bankrupting the country but the incentive – the raison d’etre for being in business – has vanished for many who see little point in carrying on.
Today Ms Reeves will be forced to face the music, and a cacophony of calls to reign, amid claims she looked Britain in the eye and lied about the state of the nation’s finances in a deceitful and calculated move to ramp up taxes.
The fury is palpable and it is growing.
It’s about time she woke up and smelled the coffee. And then did the right thing and resigned.
