A year ago, I stood inside Canons Leisure Centre watching the results roll in. After 14 years in power, the Conservatives had been comprehensively ousted. Keir Starmer was poised to take Downing Street with a commanding majority, and a supposedly reformed Labour Party was ready to write the next chapter of our national story.
For me, that day marked the end of one journey and the start of another – a new political reality. Six weeks earlier, I’d returned from Ukraine, having joined a convoy of ambulances from Wimbledon to Lviv delivering vital aid. I learned Rishi Sunak had called the election while I was in an air raid shelter. Prophetic perhaps. The next day, I was back in Blighty, ready to fight the good fight. Rishi, Theresa May and David Cameron – then Foreign Secretary – joined us on the campaign trail.
We all know how it ended. Wimbledon didn’t turn red, as it did in 1945 and 1997, but it didn’t stay blue either. Like much of the South and South West, it turned limp, Liberal Democrat yellow.
With another Wimbledon tennis season underway, I’ll always associate Centre Court and Wimbledon Park with door-knocking, hustings in packed community halls and the relentless rhythm of campaigning.
But after a year in office, The Economist’s scorecard on Labour’s performance is troubling. In my view, the core problem lies in a flawed understanding of the government’s role, particularly in relation to business.
Government’s job: support, don’t strangle
Governments don’t create wealth. Entrepreneurs, innovators, and small and medium-sized business (SME) owners do. The state should back them, not block them. Yet this administration seems obsessed with redistribution rather than creation. You don’t build a thriving economy by reshuffling money – you build it by empowering those who take risks and create.
Currently, the Government isn’t only failing to support businesses, but it’s also actively obstructing them. Endless regulation, rising taxes and arbitrary wage thresholds are choking the SMEs that drive our economy. These aren’t signs of a serious economic strategy: they’re symptoms of a political class lost at sea.
Regulation is necessary, but not the kind that piles on cost and complexity. British businesses aren’t 19th-century coal mines. They’re lean, modern and value-driven. Yet the state clings to 20th-century assumptions and 1970s instincts. That mismatch isn’t only outdated – it’s dangerous.
Let business breathe
If Labour is serious about growth, it must stop punishing success. Britain should be the best place in the world to start and scale a business, not the fastest place to be taxed out of one.
The government should:
- lower and simplify taxes to encourage investment
- scrap wage thresholds that stifle flexibility and push people out of work
- invest in energy and defence infrastructure.
None of this is radical. Yet this Cabinet seems economically tone-deaf. Their approach isn’t just counterproductive, but self-defeating too. Taxing more and delivering less drives enterprise underground and hollows out productivity.
SMEs are already doing the heavy lifting. Many export, but with international uncertainty – tariffs and geopolitical tensions – more are turning inward. When the domestic market shrinks and costs rise, staying competitive becomes almost impossible.
A year of confusion, not clarity
Starmer, Reeves, Reynolds and Kendall came in promising calm pragmatism. Yet, instead of a coherent game plan, we’ve had U-turns on winter fuel payments, disability benefits and other key policies. The market turmoil after last week’s PMQs – when borrowing costs rose and the pound fell – sent a clear signal: the centre cannot hold.
This doesn’t feel like renewal. It feels like retreat.
The bigger problem is honesty. Cameron and Osborne said they’d make cuts, and did. Liz Truss didn’t, and paid the price. Rachel Reeves said she wouldn’t raise taxes or cut spending. She’s now doing both. That breach of trust fuels disillusionment and drives support toward alternative parties.
It’s not too late to course-correct
This week’s drama reveals more than Labour’s economic weaknesses. It highlights how fragile and vulnerable our economy is to the whims of Westminster.
We face a ticking tax timebomb, with firms and families bracing for inevitable hikes in the Autumn Budget to plug holes created by short-term thinking and poor planning.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
We need policies rooted in economic reality, not ideology. We need the government to step back when it crowds out private initiative. Above all, we need leadership that sees business not as a problem to manage or an ATM to raid, but as the engine of prosperity, purpose and pride.
Twelve months on from a bruising election – and a year since that journey from London to Lviv and back again – the lesson is clear: we must stop punishing those who make success possible. Because if Labour doesn’t change course soon, there won’t be much left for them to redistribute.
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