Why small business has given up on Westminster

Plus: Andy Haldane says the Tories are on the right track, and could Labour kill off family firms?

Oct 20, 2026

Small businesses have given up on Westminster – and who can blame them?

That’s the message from polling by Opinium discussed by Robert Colvile in CapX today. By a margin of two to one, small firms feel the Government is not on their side, with more tax and more red tape every year. The remarkable thing is that despite it all, firms remain optimistic. Then again, they haven’t seen John Healey’s Budget yet.

In other news, the disastrous provisions of the Renters’ Rights Act are beginning to bite, as we repeatedly warned. A tribunal has decided to lower one tenant’s rent by £200 a month, after they challenged a £50 rise. The ramifications go far beyond one case: it puts landlords on notice that the rent is now whatever a tribunal decides. This won’t end well.

Below you’ll find all the latest pieces from CapX, plus what we’re reading from around the web.

Marc Sidwell
Editor, CapX

Today’s Takes

Fresh thinking from CapX

Why small business has lost faith in Westminster

Robert Colvile

‘There was a wider concern about the gradual, creeping spread of taxation and regulation – the fact that it seems to get more and more difficult to run a company every single year, in almost every single way.’

Small businesses are the engine of our economy, yet they don’t think politicians are on their side. From the high price of energy to Making Tax Digital, they feel under siege from an endless accumulation of added costs and regulation. Read More

Will Labour tax family firms into extinction?

Harry Phibbs

‘What could be more damaging to the social as well as the economic fabric of the nation than to single out family businesses for punishment? Yet that seems to be the idea.’

John Healey is considering a measure in his upcoming Budget that would impose higher tax rates when passing a family business on to the next generation, rather than selling it to strangers. Has the Government learnt nothing from the response to the family farm tax? Read More

Stat of the Day

Best of the Web

The UK government is living on borrowed time

Andy Haldane, Financial Times 🔒

‘In today’s straitened circumstances, the rightward fork is far more likely to succeed.’

In 2024, barely a vape wrapper separated the economic manifestos of the two main parties. Today, while Andy Burnham promotes 1950s-style state socialism, Kemi Badenoch is looking to the smaller state and lower taxes of the 1980s. The Conservatives’ plan is exactly what we need right now. Read More

Business is losing the argument for growth

Lynton Crosby, The Telegraph 🔒

‘The world many British businesses grew up in is not coming back anytime soon, if at all, but we can build a competitive economy people feel invested in, and a business community trusted because it has earned the right.’

Growth is vital to solve the economic problems we face. But somehow voters no longer see a link between a strong economy and their own living standards improving. That case urgently needs to be made, but business leaders are not doing a good job advocating for themselves. They need to reach out in a language that voters understand. Read More