Business owners bracing for a Burnham premiership have been offered a rare note of reassurance from one of the City’s most respected voices. Jim O’Neill, the economist and former Treasury minister, says the probable next prime minister will not arrive in Downing Street with a fresh round of punishing tax rises.
Speaking on The Rest Is Money podcast with Robert Peston and Steph McGovern, O’Neill said the biggest risk to confidence would be a new government talking the country down all over again.
“If something can be done to change the mindset of consumers and businesses, and make them think, ‘Hang on a second, we don’t have to worry as much about the next few years as we have been doing, effectively on and off since the financial crisis,’ then I think the human instincts and the natural juices would start to flow – so long as you don’t have an incoming government repeating what Keir did: ‘Oh, well, it’s actually way worse than we thought. Sorry, we’re going to tax the hell out of you. Life’s going to be miserable.’ That is definitely not the nature of our probable incoming leader.”
It is a message that will land well with the eight in ten SME owners who fear what a Burnham premiership would mean for their business.
But the reassurance comes with a hard edge. O’Neill argues the UK can no longer duck politically toxic “sacred cows”: the pension triple lock, a root-and-branch overhaul of welfare, replacing council tax and stamp duty with a fairer system of land and property taxation, and a credible long-term framework for infrastructure investment.
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