Just when I was starting to feel a tiny but sorry for wretched Theresa May the Tories launch a new campaign of virtue signalling which leaves me despising them ever more. The Tories, it seems, are concerned that more men than women start their own businesses and so it is “launching a campaign to remove barriers”.
Once upon a time the Tory party recognised that helping all small business grow was a good thing since they were the creators of jobs, wealth and opportunity. Now it concerns itself with virtue signalling and social engineering. You cannot force folks to risk their capital. But a real Tory would know that to help all small businesses Government should not do more but less.
A real Tory Government would be looking to phase out employers NI contributions for smaller firms and start-ups, so removing a tax on jobs. It would be looking to curb and reverse the crippling increases we have seen in business rates. It would be seeking to reduce regulation, the number of regulatory and tax filings one must make and make it easier to fire staff without the risk of ending up ion a costly and time consuming industrial tribunal. It would stop pushing up the minimum wage – every time that happens it pushes some small businesses operating on the margin, over the edge.
That would help all small businesses and entrepreneurs including those run by women and would create more jobs for men and women. The new initiative will merely mean more government spending and we all know who pays for that.
Of course the number of women entrepreneurs has been increasing, and fairly rapidly, for years. And it will carry on rising reflecting what was happening in society as a whole, just as the number of female CEOs, company directors, partners of law forms etc is on an ever increasing upwards curve. The Tories initiative will not accelerate this process but it will allow Mrs May and her non-Tory party to claim credit for what would have happened anyway. As swell as ot being proper Tories, Mrs May’s party are also not terribly honest.
Meanwhile, in the real world, entrepreneurs, male female and all the other 94 genders cry out for less Government. That is something the Tory party used to believe in.
