Get Britain growing - or get out of the way

17 June 2025, 17:26

By Charlie Rubin

This is a great country, built on the backs of small businesses. Proudly, we used to be called a nation of shopkeepers.

The government talks endlessly about “Industrial Strategy” and “Growth & Skills Agendas” but these are just exhausted slogans and Whitehall buzzwords masking complete and utter failure to deliver for the British people.

Timber is up nearly 300% since the pandemic. A 5L tin of Dulux cost me £60 last week. Prices are rising because of state interference, not in spite of it.

If the results aren’t working, maybe it’s time government stopped pretending it knows better than the people actually building the economy?

This week’s CBI economic forecast only confirms what many of us in business already feel: the UK economy is stagnant, overregulated, and coasting toward mediocrity.

Growth forecasts have been revised down again — just 1.2% in 2025 and 1.0% in 2026. Worse still, inflation is set to remain over 3% this year, driven by higher costs from government-induced wage hikes and red tape.

We’re being told to be grateful for 1% growth. Sorry — but that’s not a country I recognise. As someone who runs one of the fastest-growing startups in the UK (Purdy & Figg has grown from 0-£60m in sales in three years, and created 100 jobs…) I can tell you growth matters. Speed matters. Optimism matters. And ambition matters. Right now, this government lacks all three.

Meanwhile, we hear cheering in Whitehall about wage increases. But ask any business owner, how are those pay rises being funded?

The answer is price hikes, cancelled investment and ultimately job cuts because employers can’t afford to take on more staff. It’s not a real pay rise. It’s a stealth tax on the country. It’s the economics of fantasy and it’s driven by a cabinet full of people who’ve never had to meet payroll themselves.

And all this is happening while the Centre for Policy Studies reports in the same week that government spending is now a record-breaking £24,000 per person per year. Yes you read that correctly: £24,000 of your tax money per person, per year. Of that, £2,000 goes on debt interest, £3,000 on working-age welfare, and nearly £4,000 on healthcare per person. This is not sustainable. And it’s certainly not pro-growth.

We’re a great country — but we are losing respect around the world and we can all feel it.

The ambition that once made Britain an economic powerhouse is being replaced with a kind of bureaucratic fatalism.

We don’t need more taskforces or slogans. We need to cut taxes on work and investment, back small business, and refocus the attitudes to reward the people who build, hire and grow. The current path — low growth, high tax, and endless red tape — is a dead end.

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Charlie Rubin is an Entrepreneur & Co-Founder of all-natural cleaning company Purdy & Figg.

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