Labour’s Tax Madness Is Killing Off Britain’s Entrepreneurs and Torching Our Economy

There’s something rotten here in dear old Blighty. And its name is Labour’s economic policy.

Rachel Reeves has decided the best way to grow the economy is by kneecapping the very entrepreneurs and family businesses that create jobs, build wealth and feed the nation.

How? By launching a kamikaze tax raid on business that would make even a Brussels bureaucrat blush.

Let’s be clear. This isn’t policy. It’s economic vandalism.

Businesses are already reeling from the double whammy of Labour’s rising employer National Insurance contributions and a steep hike in the National Living Wage, both of which are hammering their cost base and sowing chaos. But now comes more grim news for Labour.

According to CBI Economics, Rachel Reeves’s plan to rip up Business Property Relief (BPR) and Agricultural Property Relief (APR) won’t raise the £1.8bn Labour has promised the Treasury. In fact, it will do the exact opposite — costing nearly £2bn by 2030.

Yes, you read that right: a policy supposedly designed to boost the public purse will actually burn a hole in it. That’s not just flawed economics — it’s economically insane. But then again, so many of this Labour government’s policies seem to be cut from the same bonkers cloth.

But it gets worse. This isn’t just about red ink on a Treasury spreadsheet. This is about livelihoods. Real people. Real pain.

Over 200,000 jobs will be lost, says the report. That’s not just a statistic, that’s thousands of workers in Yorkshire, the East of England, Northern Ireland, and beyond. These aren’t lazy plutocrats sipping Chardonnay on the deck of the yacht. These are grafters. Generational farmers. Builders of businesses. People who take risk, create value, and, crucially… pay taxes.

And how does Labour reward them? With a 20 per cent tax grab on inherited family farms and business assets over £1 million. Forget death duties. This is death to business.

Family Business UK, who commissioned the CBI research, put it bluntly:

“Far from increasing tax receipts into the Treasury and stimulating the economic growth the Government is trying to deliver, the changes to BPR and APR in the October Budget achieve the opposite.”

And that’s not a partisan swipe — that’s cold, economic truth.

Farmers, charities and businesses or all shapes and sizes are seeing the human toll. In November, John Charlesworth, 78, took his own life after being “eaten away” by fear of the looming tax changes. The Post has seen reports that numerous farmers have also suffered the same fate. If that doesn’t make you pause, what will?

And it’s not just farming under the axe. Chris Walker, a former Treasury economist, found 10% of non-doms have already left the UK thanks to Labour’s crackdown. If that rises much further, the Treasury will really start to feel the bite. Analysts reckon we could soon be looking at over £10bn in lost economic growth. Madness, squared.

Entrepreneurship is not a crime. Taking a risk, investing your life, your savings, your sweat, to build something that employs people and pays into the national pot should be celebrated, not punished.

Speaking to the Telegraph, Tom Bradshaw of the National Farmers Union is right:

“This report must serve as a wake-up call to Treasury, or we face major cuts to investment and significant job losses.”

Mo Metcalf-Fisher of the Countryside Alliance warns:

“It would be an act of foolishness to ignore the very real and irreversible damage these changes pose to the stability of the agricultural sector.”

And if you thought the Conservatives had gone soft, Andrew Griffith, the Shadow Business Secretary, isn’t mincing his words:

“Labour plan to steal the futures of a generation of entrepreneurs on the back of some hooky treasury maths and a blatant breach of election promises… Our first Conservative budget will reverse this damaging measure.”

It’s almost as if Labour looked at every lever of economic success — enterprise, inheritance, innovation — and decided to pull the one marked “Do Not Touch: Economic Suicide.”

The result? A hostile environment for those who dare to build. A tax regime that drives talent and capital out of the country. A government that claims to be “pro-growth” while stomping on the very roots of growth itself.

We should be unleashing Britain’s entrepreneurs, not strangling them with inheritance tax red tape. We should be planting the seeds of enterprise, not salting the earth with tax raids.

Labour’s war on wealth creators must end, or Britain’s future won’t be built. It’ll be buried.