Sir James Dyson is right to warn on Labour’s damaging policies
Sir James Dyson knows a thing or two about how to build a business. In an impassioned piece in The Sun yesterday he reflected on his own entrepreneurial experiences, saying “It took me 5,127 prototypes, each made by hand…I was on the brink of bankruptcy before I found success.”
He set out his concerns that Britain “no longer has the aspiration to create the Dysons of the future.” While he rightly acknowledges that the roots of this condition “go deeper than the last 12 months” he doesn’t hold back in criticising those he deems responsible today for presiding over a system that risks fatally undermining our economy at a time when countries need to capitalise on every inch of opportunity.
He takes aim at “myopic” civil servants and politicians who, whether through conspiracy or cock-up, are driving away wealth creators and deterring investment. The inventor and philanthropist says that “Those who are starting new businesses are doing so elsewhere…they have decided it’s just not worth doing it here,” adding that “Rachel Reeves will learn this to her cost in the years ahead.”
Dyson has been vocal in recent months, warning in January that Labour’s policies – particularly when it comes to inheritance tax (now applied to family businesses) risk “killing the geese that lay the golden eggs.”
Why stop at changes to the non-dom policy?
His criticism goes back to the Chancellor’s first Budget in October last year, described by Dyson at the time as “ignorant.” We now know that the Chancellor is looking at a possible u-turn on some of the more damaging elements of her non-dom regime overhaul.
The decision to apply UK inheritance tax to international wealth and assets spurred a huge number of people to leave the UK for more accommodating tax jurisdictions, and it’s this particular policy that the Treasury is said to be reviewing. Such a change would make sense, but why stop there?
The non-dom reforms will almost certainly cost more money than they bring in (or at least much less than had been claimed) but the same dynamic can be seen in other parts of the government’s economic policy from VAT on school fees to higher rates of National Insurance and changes to the tax treatment of family farms.
These policies are individually damaging but collectively disastrous, leading to Dyson’s damning allegation that we’re run by people who “hate those who set out to try.”