“Don’t confuse cancellation with failure.” That, famously, was the line David Letterman, the bloke who actually built The Late Show, passed to Jon Stewart years ago. And it was the line Stewart hurled back across the Ed Sullivan Theater this week, voice catching, finger jabbing, as Stephen Colbert prepared the wake for America’s number-one late-night programme.

Read that again. Number. One. As in top of the bloody pile, comfortably ahead of Fallon and Kimmel, the most watched chat show in the United States. And tonight, somewhere around 11:35pm in New York, CBS will pull down the shutters, sweep the studio and try to convince us, with all the conviction of a teenager denying he’s been at the cooking sherry, that this was, and I quote, “purely a financial decision.”

Of course it was. And I am Beyoncé.

Let us be grown-ups about this. CBS euthanised its highest-rated chat show three days after its host called the network’s parent company, Paramount, out for paying Donald Trump a sixteen-million-dollar settlement over a 60 Minutes interview. Colbert called it, with the kind of plainness America used to specialise in, a “big fat bribe”. Seventy-two hours later, the man was told he was for the chop. The merger Paramount needed waved through by Trump’s pet FCC sailed merrily on soon after. If you don’t smell something on the breeze, you’ve no nose.

Letterman, never knowingly understated, called CBS executives “lying weasels” and signed off with a parting shot, borrowed from Ed Murrow and inflected with a vowel Lord Reith would not have approved, that I cannot quote in these pages without an asterisk. Quite right too. The man invented the franchise. He owns the moral high ground and he’s busy strewing it with broken set furniture flung from the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater.

For those of us who have written before about Colbert and the slow strangulation of political satire in the age of Trump, tonight is not so much a final episode as a final warning. The message coming out of West 53rd Street is now horribly simple: take the mickey out of the man in the Oval Office, embarrass the parent company in front of the regulators he appoints, and your career, Emmy-bedecked, network-leading, fifty-two weeks a year, is over before the band finishes the play-out.

That is not a financial decision. That is a precedent. And a vile one.

I happen to run businesses for a living. I have spent thirty years arguing that British plc should be tougher, braver, more willing to stick its hand up at the back of the room. So I am the last person to wring my hands when an American media giant decides it can no longer afford a hundred-million-dollar talk show. Late-night is unwell. Audiences are migrating to TikTok and YouTube faster than commissioners can flick the studio lights on. Even my dog has a podcast.

But that is not what happened here. What happened here is that a man told a joke about a man who cannot take a joke, and the bean counters folded the chair he was sitting on. As I argued when Trump’s tariffs began squeezing British exports, this White House treats business as an extension of grievance. CBS didn’t get cancelled by the market. It got cancelled by a sulk.

That is the bit that ought to terrify British boardrooms, not just American ones. Because the chilling effect does not stop at the Hudson. Every UK media business doing deals in the United States, every studio, streamer, format house, news brand, is now reading the body language. Don’t annoy the President. Don’t let your talent annoy the President. Settle, smile, soften the gag. It is, to borrow from another television creation I have written about, Jed Bartlet’s worst nightmare arriving on a Wednesday afternoon: the executive branch quietly dictating the punchlines.

We are British. We invented taking the mickey out of the powerful. From Spitting Image to Mock the Week, Have I Got News For You to whatever Charlie Brooker fancies doing next Wednesday, satire is, for us, a load-bearing wall of national life. A democracy that cannot laugh at its leaders is not a democracy in good health; it is a banana republic with better dental cover.

Colbert, for what it is worth, will be seen off in his final week by Jon Stewart, Tom Hanks and Barack Obama, hardly the send-off you stage for a man whose ratings have gone south. Letterman is right. Cancellation is not failure. The failure belongs to CBS, to Paramount, and to every executive who decided that the easiest way to grow up was to crouch down.

The joke, on this last night, is not on Stephen Colbert. The joke is on the rest of us, if we sit politely and watch.

Read more:
Colbert’s final bow: How CBS cancelled the king of late night to keep Trump sweet

Somewhere in a damp Parisian hotel in October 1977, a young Geordie schoolteacher called Gordon Sumner picked up his bass, glanced at a faded poster of Cyrano de Bergerac in the foyer, leaned out of the window at the working girls below, and rattled off a small reggae-flavoured number about a prostitute he had never met.

He called her Roxanne. He spent, by most accounts, an afternoon on the thing. Possibly a long lunch. Certainly less time than I will have spent writing this column.

That song, in February 2022, helped Sting hand his entire songwriting catalogue, some six hundred tunes, to Universal Music Publishing for a reported $300 million. Roughly £240 million in real money. For lyrics scribbled on hotel notepads, in the back of tour buses, occasionally in the bath. Even allowing for inflation, alimony and the eye-watering price of his tantric retreats, it remains, in cold commercial terms, the single greatest example of “sweating the asset” I have ever encountered in business.

Consider the original economics. A pop song in 1977 was a perishable: three minutes of grooves pressed into a slab of polyvinyl chloride, designed to be bought for 75p, played to death, scratched by a teenager and replaced by next week’s offering. The label took the lion’s share. The writer, if he was lucky and his manager was honest, he usually wasn’t, got a few pence per copy. And yet here we are, half a century on, and Roxanne is still earning. Every car advert. Every karaoke licence. Every Spotify spin in a Bangkok cocktail bar at two in the morning. Every nostalgic Boomer thumbing repeat in his Range Rover on the M40 to Bicester Village.

Sting is not alone. Bob Dylan flogged his songwriting catalogue to Universal in late 2020 for around $300 million, then sold his recorded works to Sony the following summer for another $200 million. Bruce Springsteen, the working-class hero from Asbury Park, lifted somewhere between $500 and $600 million off Sony for his life’s work. Bowie’s estate, Genesis, Neil Young, Pink Floyd. The numbers are positively obscene, and rising.

Why? Because, according to the IFPI’s Global Music Report 2025, recorded music brought in $29.6 billion globally last year. Streaming alone topped $20 billion, fully 69 per cent of the pie. There are now 752 million paying subscribers worldwide and ten consecutive years of growth. The very technology that everyone solemnly said would kill the music industry, Napster, file-sharing, the iPod, the internet itself, has instead resurrected it as the perfect annuity. Music doesn’t sell once any more. It sells forever, in fractions of a penny, every second of every day, while the writer sleeps.

Compare that to the rest of us. The plumber who fitted my boiler in 2018 invoiced me, paid his VAT and moved on. The barrister who drafted our new sponsorship contracts billed by the hour and that was that. The architect, the dentist, the accountant, the management consultant, all selling time, all watching the clock, all running flat out until the day they retire and the cheques stop. Even the great industrial fortunes of the twentieth century, your Wedgwoods, your Hansons, your Goldsmiths, required factories, foundries, lorries, lawyers, picket lines and the occasional hostile takeover. Whereas Paul McCartney dreamt the melody of Yesterday in his girlfriend’s spare room in 1965, scribbled “scrambled eggs, oh my baby how I love your legs” as placeholder lyrics, and has since banked north of £19.5 million on a single song — the most-covered tune in human history, with more than three thousand versions. The Beatles’ catalogue is now valued comfortably north of £1.2 billion and reportedly throws off £70 to £90 million a year for owners who, gloriously, include almost none of the people who actually wrote it.

This is the lesson British business has been embarrassingly slow to learn. It is not what you make. It is what you make that keeps making. The whole intellectual property economy, software, brands, patents, content, is built on this principle. Microsoft writes Office once and bills you forever. Disney drew Mickey before the Wall Street Crash and is still suing people about him. Coca-Cola scribbled a formula on a piece of paper in 1886 and has paid for four generations of dividend cheques. But none of them, not one, possesses the casual, narcotic genius of the songwriter who spent an afternoon humming and is still cashing seven-figure royalty statements in his seventies.

We business owners should be furious. And inspired. In November 2023, The Beatles even released Now and Then, a John Lennon demo from the late seventies, patched up with artificial intelligence and a bit of Peter Jackson studio wizardry, and it strolled to number one in the UK, fifty-six years after their previous chart-topper. The asset, sweated and sweated and sweated again, and now sweating for a fourth generation of listeners who weren’t born when their grandparents bought the original LP.

So the next time some private equity grandee bangs the boardroom table demanding “operational efficiency” and “recurring revenue streams”, remind him gently that the most efficient business model in the modern economy is a paunchy Geordie with a guitar humming nonsense about a Parisian prostitute in 1977 and banking nine-figure cheques in his seventies. The rest of us should be so lucky. Or, more usefully, so clever.

Read more:
Sweating the asset: How Sting wrote Roxanne in an afternoon and sold it for £240 Million

Many employers assume that withdrawing a job offer before someone starts work is a low-risk decision.

A recent Employment Appeal Tribunal ruling suggests otherwise. It held that the withdrawal of a conditional job offer amounted to a breach of contract, even though the employee had not actually started work, and that the financial consequences can be significant.

The case of Kankanalapalli v Loesche Energy Systems Ltd is a timely reminder that a job offer, even one labelled “conditional”, can amount to a binding contract the moment a candidate accepts it.

What happened?

A candidate was offered a role as a project manager, subject to satisfactory references, a right to work check, and successful completion of a six-month probationary period. The offer letter referred to key terms such as salary and a start date, but it did not mention a notice period. The employer also agreed to contribute towards relocation costs.

The candidate accepted the offer by email and completed the new-starter paperwork, including providing referee details and the required right to work documents.

A few weeks later, the employer withdrew the job offer because of delays in the project. The candidate brought a claim for breach of contract, citing the withdrawal of the offer and failure to pay any notice pay.

What did the Employment Tribunal and EAT decide?

The Employment Tribunal dismissed the claim. It held that the job offer was conditional and that the employer had not yet received references or completed the right to work checks (which required original documents). The contract had therefore not been formed.

The EAT disagreed. The key question was the nature of the conditions attached to the offer and whether they were:

• “Conditions precedent”, that is, conditions that must be satisfied before any contract is formed) or
• “Conditions subsequent”: whereby acceptance of an offer gives rise to a binding contract, but if the conditions are not satisfied, the contract terminates.

The conditions were grouped together in the offer letter, and one (passing the probationary period) could only be satisfied after employment began. As there had been no attempt to differentiate between the different conditions, this prevented the EAT from finding that they could be conditions precedent.

The offer letter included the key terms, both parties had treated the contract as binding, and the employer had started the onboarding process. Consequently, the employer did not have an unrestricted right to withdraw the offer for reasons unrelated to the conditions subsequent.

Finally, as the offer letter was silent on notice, the EAT had to imply a reasonable notice period. Taking into account the role’s seniority, the relocation requirement, and the lengthy interview process, it was concluded that three months’ notice would be a reasonable period, which the employer was required to pay.

What does this mean for your business?

The case highlights several practical steps employers should take when making job offers:

1. Labelling an offer “conditional” is not enough on its own and will not prevent a binding contract from forming or a breach of contract if the job offer is withdrawn. If you intend certain conditions to be met before a contract exists, those conditions need to be clearly spelled out, with pre-contract conditions listed separately from post-start conditions, such as probation.
2. Always include a notice period in the offer letter, covering both the probationary period and the post-probation standard notice period after probation has been successfully completed. If you don’t, the Employment Tribunal will imply one, and it may be longer than you’d expect.
3. Before withdrawing any offer, take legal advice to ascertain whether the job offer was conditional or unconditional. Depending on the seniority of the role and the implied or stated notice period, a successful breach of contract claim can mean significant compensation as well as considerable management time.
4. Finally, it’s worth reviewing your current offer letter templates to ensure key terms are included and that the conditional nature of any offer is clearly and correctly expressed.

A little extra care at the offer stage is far less costly than defending a claim if a job offer is withdrawn.

Read more:
Withdrawing a job offer can cost you more than you think

I am not, in the ordinary run of things, a man given to civic exhortation. Lecture another adult on what to do with their Thursday and you tend to end up wearing their coffee, quite rightly.

But indulge me, just this once, because tomorrow is local election day across great swathes of England, and somebody has to say something about the great British shrug that has come to define our relationship with the ballot box at the parish-and-pothole level.

In the last round of council elections, turnout in some wards crept south of thirty per cent. Thirty per cent. Sit with that for a moment. Seven in ten adults, in possession of a franchise their grandparents fought a war to defend, opted instead to put the kettle on, watch a man on YouTube fitting a gearbox, or sit there in a state of low-grade irritation about Westminster as though the council had nothing whatever to do with their lives.

As though the council did not run their bins, set their parking charges, decide whether the vape shop next door could open at seven in the morning, and quietly determine, through the dark art of the local plan, whether a four-storey block of flats will rise next year on the patch of brownfield where their children currently kick a football.

I run businesses for a living, and I can tell you, as readers of this magazine will already know in their bones, that the people who shape your operating costs are not, in the main, the slick young SpAds and ambitious junior ministers preening on the Today programme.

They are councillors. People with names like Peter, Paul and Jane, even I used to be one for over a decade. People with dreadful lanyards and, mostly, excellent intentions. They set business rates relief schemes. They grant, or refuse, your A-board, your awning, your application for a pavement licence so the punters can drink rosé in the rain.

They decide whether your high street will boast a half-decent bus service or a bewildered taxi rank flanked by three Costas and a Greggs. They sign off road closures that can cost a small retailer a fortnight’s takings in a single botched resurfacing job. They run procurement budgets through which billions are quietly dispensed every year, and from which, incidentally, your own firm could perfectly well be eating, were you ever to bother with the tendering portal.

In short, if you run a business, the council is your landlord, your regulator, your customer and your traffic warden, all rolled into one slightly damp Edwardian building with a malfunctioning lift. Ignore it at your peril.

Now. I am not going to tell you who to vote for. I have my views, strong ones, in fact, ones I will not bore you with here because, frankly, they are not the point, and you have yours. That is the splendid, frustrating, occasionally infuriating glory of the thing. You may be a lifelong Conservative who has finally had enough. You may be Labour through and through, a Lib Dem with a clipboard, a Green who cycles, a Reform man who shouts, or one of those magnificent independents who slipped in last time on a single-issue ticket about the duck pond.

I do not care. I genuinely, profoundly, do not care. What I care about is that you put on a coat tomorrow, walk to the church hall, the primary school or the slightly dispiriting community centre, take the stubby pencil they have thoughtfully provided, and put a cross in a box.

Because here is the awkward truth: democracy is a muscle. Use it badly, use it crossly, use it with a heavy sigh and a glass of red waiting at home, but use it. Leave it in the drawer for too long and it withers, and once it has withered the people who do turn up, and they always turn up, get to decide everything for the rest of us. That is not a left-wing observation or a right-wing one. It is simply how arithmetic works in a polling station.

I am told there is a fashionable line these days, much retweeted by sixth-formers and weary executives alike, that “voting changes nothing”. To which the only sensible reply is: marvellous, then you will not object to my vote counting double. Of course it changes things. Ask any small business owner who has watched a sympathetic council slash parking charges, or an unsympathetic one slap on a workplace levy. Ask the publican facing a three a.m. licence refusal. Ask the parent whose new primary school exists because three hundred neighbours bothered to turn out one wet Thursday in May.

So. Tomorrow. Coat on, pencil up, cross in. I am not telling you who to vote for. I am telling you to vote. There is, I promise, a meaningful difference.

Read more:
Local Elections 2026: Why you must go out and vote tomorrow

There is a particular kind of silence that descends on a once-busy restaurant when last orders have come and gone, the candles have guttered, and the chef is out the back having a cigarette and contemplating bankruptcy. It is the sound of a small dream dying. And right now, across Britain, that silence is becoming deafening.

I have just returned from dinner at a perfectly nice neighbourhood bistro in west London, where the owner, a man who quit a comfortable banking job to chase the romance of feeding people, confessed somewhere between the burrata and the lamb that he is closing in September. Not because nobody comes. They come. They eat. They tip. They order the second bottle. But the maths, he sighed, no longer mathses.

The story is the same in every postcode. UKHospitality reckons we lost roughly one pub or restaurant every single day last year. The Hospitality Rising figures are grimmer still: chefs walking away, dining rooms going dark, sites being flogged off to coffee chains and vape shops. And yet our Chancellor has decided that what this fragile, brilliant, world-beating sector really needs is a thumping great kicking.

Let us count the bruises. From April 2025, employer National Insurance jumped to 15 per cent. The threshold at which businesses begin paying it was slashed from £9,100 to £5,000, which is a fancy Treasury way of saying that every waiter, every glass-polisher, every Saturday-morning kitchen porter is now considerably more expensive to employ. Throw in the National Living Wage rising to £12.21 an hour, business rates relief shrivelling from 75 per cent to a measly 40 per cent, and a stubborn refusal to cut hospitality VAT to anything resembling our European competitors, and you have what UKHospitality calculated as an additional £3.4 billion annual hit on the sector. Three-point-four. Billion. With a B.

To which Rachel Reeves and Sir Keir Starmer have essentially shrugged and said: tough. Get on with it. Be more productive. Use AI. Yes, really, the Prime Minister actually suggested artificial intelligence was the answer to the front-of-house labour crisis. Has the man ever tried to get a chatbot to recommend the Picpoul de Pinet over the Sancerre, or to deal with a four-top of accountants splitting the bill seventeen ways?

I am not, as a rule, a conspiracist. But I am beginning to wonder whether this is plain incompetence or something darker. Because if you sat down with a clean sheet of paper and deliberately tried to design a policy package guaranteed to incinerate independent restaurants, you would land more or less exactly where this Government has landed. Hammer the labour costs. Hammer the property costs. Refuse the one tax cut, VAT, that would actually move the needle. Drive away the high-spending non-doms who used to keep Mayfair humming, propose extending the smoking ban to pub gardens and pavement tables, then make it harder still to recruit from abroad. Magnifique.

The rationale, presumably, is that restaurants are a luxury, frequented by people who can afford it, staffed by people who do not vote Labour. Easy political target. Wrong, of course. Our sector employs 3.5 million people, more than half of them under 30, many in their first proper job, learning skills no classroom ever taught, graft, courtesy, and how to charm a furious German tourist out of a complaint about the size of the prawns. Killing restaurants does not punish the rich. It punishes the kid from Croydon who wanted to be a sommelier, the Polish chef who built a life here, and the landlady whose pub still kept her village alive.

And here is the bit Reeves seems incapable of grasping: hospitality does not just feed us. It powers tourism, it props up high streets, it fills supply chains from Cornish dairies to Yorkshire breweries to the Kentish vineyards her colleagues love being photographed at. When a restaurant closes, the butcher feels it, the laundry firm feels it, the cab driver feels it, the florist feels it. You do not just lose a place to eat. You lose an entire ecosystem.

I had hoped, fool that I am, that this Labour Government might understand that. Many of its members, after all, claim to enjoy the occasional supper out, although one suspects most of theirs arrives by Deliveroo on the public purse. But policy after policy has revealed either profound ignorance of how a small business actually functions, or active hostility towards anyone who took a punt on themselves rather than waited patiently for a public sector pay rise.

The lights are going out across our high streets. The chairs are being stacked. The wine is being sold off at cost. And our Chancellor, when asked, musters only the platitude that growth takes time.

So does dying, Rachel. So does dying.

Read more:
Last orders for British hospitality: Are Reeves and Starmer trying to kill the UK restaurant sector?

There is a particular kind of dinner I have, every couple of months, in a particular kind of place, a Soho members’ club that lets you bring more than three people without an interrogation, in this case, with a particular kind of British technology founder.

He is, by his late thirties, on his third successful company. He has, between them, raised something north of £180 million in venture capital. He has, currently, about 220 employees in London, with another fifty due to be hired in the coming twelve months. He has, last week, sold a further $40 million tranche of his Series C to two American funds.

And he has, somewhere between his second and third glass of red, told me that he is moving the company’s headquarters to New York. Not on principle. Not on tax. Not on regulation. Not even, despite the obvious temptation in this column, on the Chancellor. He is moving because the next $200 million he needs, in 18 months, is in New York, and the practical day-to-day life of a CEO in a series of monthly trips to a city eight time zones from his children is, frankly, too painful. So he is moving the family. The London office will remain. It will, over time, get smaller. A version of this conversation has happened, by my count, with at least twelve British founders I know personally in the last two years.

Britain does not, in 2026, have a start-up problem. We start-up exquisitely. We have, by any international comparison, more new technology businesses per capita than nearly any other developed economy. Cambridge is, on its own, one of the great clusters of the world. London’s software and fintech ecosystems are deeper than Berlin’s, deeper than Paris’s, comparable to New York’s on most measures, with a couple of exceptions. We have brilliant universities, a working tax-incentive regime in EIS, a meaningful angel community, and a steady flow of seed and Series A capital.

What we have is a stay-at-home problem.

The numbers are visible if anyone bothers to look. UK technology IPOs, by listed value, are running at less than 12 per cent of US listings adjusted for relative GDP. UK Series C and onwards rounds are dominated, by deal count, by American lead investors. The proportion of UK technology companies founded in 2018 that have, by 2025, relocated their corporate domicile overseas, to the US, to Delaware, to Ireland, to Singapore, is now over 22 per cent. The proportion of all UK-founded unicorns that listed on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq, rather than the London Stock Exchange, is over 80 per cent for the last decade. Eighty.

Why? It is not, despite the City lobbying, primarily a tax problem. American capital gains rates are not, in any meaningful sense, more friendly to founders than British rates. It is not, despite a great deal of Treasury-led discussion, a corporate-tax problem. The US corporate tax rate, when you blend federal and state, is comparable. It is not, despite the political mood music, a regulatory problem in the technology sectors that matter, the FCA, where it counts for fintech, is a notably more friendly regulator than its American equivalent.

It is, primarily, a depth-of-capital-pool problem. The UK pension system, despite the most articulate efforts of the Edinburgh Reforms and the Mansion House Compact and a half-dozen subsequent initiatives, allocates an embarrassingly small proportion of its £3 trillion of assets to growth-stage British equities. Canadian pension funds are, statistically, more invested in British scale-ups than British pension funds. This is the absurdity of the present situation: the world’s ninth-largest pension industry, hosted in Britain, is not investing in British growth, and is being out-deployed, in British growth equity, by Canadians, Australians, and Americans.

Fix the depth, and the rest of the problem largely goes with it. There are about three things to do. First, get UK Defined Contribution pension money, which is, by the way, growing at over £100 billion a year, into a properly structured British scale-up vehicle, at a meaningful target allocation, with a proper governance overlay. Second, restore the pre-2008 status of the London Stock Exchange as a competitive listing venue for technology businesses, by reforming the dual-class share structures and the listing-rules architecture that has kept it stranded in the era of utilities and miners. Third, make the EIS reliefs permanent, generous, and unfussy at the seed stage, so that the early-stage capital remains the easiest tier to raise.

None of this is impossible. None of this is even, in the international context, particularly bold. The Australians did most of it in 2008. The Canadians did most of it in 2014. The Singaporeans built theirs in around six years. We are, in 2026, still pondering it.

And in the meantime, my Soho friend will, in the autumn, leave. He will take the family. He will keep the London office. The American round will close. The next British unicorn, and there will be a next British unicorn, will, on present trajectory, list, again, in New York. The Mayoral candidates will, on the day after, all denounce the loss to “Brand London”. And the bottle of red, in our particular Soho members’ club, will be uncorked, again, by someone else.

We start-up brilliantly, in this country. We just need, finally, to learn how to keep them. The May locals, it turns out, are not the only thing on the ballot.

Read more:
Britain doesn’t have a start-up problem, it has a stay-at-home problem

Tomorrow is May Day, and somewhere in the middle of the country, a married couple in their early forties is opening up a small bakery for the third Friday in succession on which they have not, between them, drawn a salary.

They started the business in 2022. They re-mortgaged the house. They missed two of their daughter’s school plays last term, including the one where she had a line. They have not, for nineteen months, taken a day off. They are, on the official ONS labour-market classification, “self-employed”, which is to say they are not, technically, considered workers at all.

I would like, on this particular May Day, to suggest that they are.

There is a particular sleight-of-hand in British political language that has, over the last fifty years or so, produced an increasingly narrow definition of the word “worker”. A worker, in current usage, is someone who is paid by an employer in return for doing a job, ideally with a contract, a payslip, and a pension contribution. The “workers’ movement”, in modern parlance, is the political and industrial movement representing exactly that figure. Anyone outside the definition is, by implication, something else, an entrepreneur, an investor, a self-employed person, a small-business owner, a family-firm founder. They get other ministries, other sympathies, other adjectives. They do not, on the whole, get celebrated on May Day.

This is, frankly, ridiculous. The bakery couple work, on the broad numbers, more hours than any of their employees. They take home, on average, less per hour than their employees. They have less holiday, less protection, less pension, less sick pay, less of everything. Their economic risk is total. Their political clout is somewhere between negligible and non-existent. Their public image, in much of British political discourse, is closer to that of the tax-avoiding non-dom than that of the sympathetic NHS porter, which is, when you actually meet either, a perfect inversion of reality.

There are, by the latest ONS estimate, just over 4.3 million self-employed workers in the UK. Of those, around 600,000 run businesses with employees of their own. They collectively contribute approximately £303 billion to UK GDP, which is more than the entire UK financial-services sector. They pay corporation tax, dividend tax, capital gains tax, employer NICs, business rates, VAT, and insurance premium tax. They keep more than three million Britons in PAYE jobs. They are, in any meaningful definition, the productive backbone of the country.

And, for at least the last decade, they have been treated by every successive UK administration with a mixture of mild benign neglect and occasional, almost incidental, cruelty. IR35 was a cruelty. Making Tax Digital is a cruelty. The narrowing of business property relief on inheritance tax has been a cruelty. The withdrawal of various small expenses and reliefs has been a cruelty. None of these things has been done because anyone in Whitehall actively dislikes the small-business owner; it is rather that, in the present political configuration, the small-business owner is too small to matter, too dispersed to organise, and too busy to march. The civil servants drafting the SI get the headline figures right, and the headline figures, individually, are small.

May Day, in its original conception, was a workers’ holiday, but, as anyone with any knowledge of the period will tell you, the “workers” it commemorated were not, exclusively, the wage-labour pay-packet figure of present-day usage. They were the broader productive class: artisans, shopkeepers, mechanics, makers, the journeymen in the literal sense who worked with their own tools to produce something useful. A baker in Walsall, in 2026, getting up at 4am to mix the dough, fits that older definition perfectly. The fact that she has, technically, incorporated herself as a private limited company should not, surely, exclude her from the holiday.

I do not, please understand, wish to undermine the more familiar version of May Day. The march, the bunting, the speeches, the flag, they are part of a recognisable British political tradition that I rather enjoy. I just would like, this year, to make a small modest plea for the inclusion in it of the people whose labour is no less skilled, no less hard-won, no less honest, and considerably less protected, than the labour the day was originally meant to celebrate.

So if you are in the bakery this morning, or the small workshop, or the family-run pub, or the consultancy that lives at the kitchen table, or the farm that has been in your name for thirty years, happy May Day. The country is, despite the available evidence, better off because of you. Take five minutes off, if you can. Drink a coffee. Watch the bunting. And, before you go back to it, remember that whatever the textbook says, and whatever the marching song goes, the work you do is, exactly, work.

Read more:
On May Day, spare a thought for the workers who took the risk and built the bloody company

I wrote, last year, about how worried I was for the British rural economy, and a few of you wrote back to ask, kindly, what I thought we should do.

The honest answer, I have realised over the intervening twelve months, is that the most important and most fragile thing we could do is keep the village pub open. I have been thinking about this, since the spring, almost every day. So allow me, this week, the personal column. I think it is the right week for it.

The pub I am writing about, and yes, of course it is a particular pub, is in a small village in Suffolk, on a road that the satnav lies about. It has been there in some form since the 17th century. The current building is largely Georgian, with a Victorian extension and a 1990s kitchen that I would generously describe as character-building. The current tenant has been in place for eleven years. The previous tenant for twenty-three.

It is, by the present trade body’s definition, a “community wet-led” pub. About 60 per cent of its trade is drinks; 30 per cent is food; the remainder is the upstairs rooms, which were converted in the 1990s for the kind of weekending Londoners we used to call “townies” and which we now call, less affectionately, “zoom refugees”. It employs four full-time and seven part-time staff. The full-time staff include the chef, who came up from Hackney during the pandemic and never left, and a young lad of 22 who started as a glass-collector five years ago and has just qualified as cellar-master. The part-time staff are mostly women from the village, two of whom would, in a different country, be working in a primary school that closed in 2019.

It is the wettest, most stubbornly British piece of social infrastructure I know, and it is, on the present rates revaluation, in a kitchen-equipment-replacement cycle that nobody saw coming, and in a year of unusually aggressive energy contracts, about £42,000 a year away from solvency. This is not a private detail. The publican, when I rang him on Monday, told me himself.

There are, in our village, no shops. There has been no post office for fourteen years. The bus runs twice a week. The primary school, in 2019, lost its Year 6 cohort permanently. The doctor’s surgery closed for new patient registrations in 2018 and is, now, more of a dispensing arrangement than a clinic. The church holds services once a fortnight. The mobile library, which had one stop here on a Tuesday afternoon, was wound up in the funding round of 2022. The pub is, in any meaningful sense, what the rest of the village now is.

Were it to close, the geography of village life would not be replaced by something else. There is no shop ready to take over the “community” function. There is no village hall with a working kitchen, it lost its Aga in 2017 and the trustees never raised the £6,200 to replace it. The Cubs, who use the pub’s back room on Wednesdays, would, on past form, drift to a town six miles away and, on past form, shrink. The Sunday lunches, which give an unmarried woman of 78 her main weekly social contact, would not happen. The wakes, and we have had four, this year, in a village of 273, would have to be held in someone’s living room.

I am aware, as I write this, of the metropolitan eyebrow being raised. The countryside has been moaning, the eyebrow says, for as long as anyone can remember, and the countryside is not what it once was. Both of those things, technically, are true. They are also evasions. The countryside is materially different from any other part of England in one specific respect: when its institutions go, there is, almost without exception, no replacement. London has, in any one square mile, three public houses, four cafés, a couple of pubs that aren’t very good, several restaurants and a handful of community spaces that do roughly the same social work between them. Suffolk does not. The English village, almost uniquely in the British Isles, has put all of its community infrastructure into a single building, and that building, increasingly, is the pub.

What would I, accordingly, do? Almost everything I have already proposed in this magazine: VAT at 12.5 per cent for hospitality; a community-pub-specific multiplier on rates; the “asset of community value” reform with the burden of proof reversed onto developers seeking to flat-pack a Grade II listed pub. Plus one more, which I have been quieter about until now: a small, ring-fenced national fund, perhaps £150 million a year, to provide low-interest loans to community pub buyouts in areas where the only alternative is closure. We have such a fund for cinemas. We have a far larger one for football. We do not, anywhere in our policy stack, have one for the rural pub.

We will know, in two or three years, whether we kept these places open. I’ll be in the Suffolk one as long as it’s open. So will, on present form, the village. The country, very quietly, would be better for the same.

Read more:
I worry for the rural pub, and yes, this one is personal too

I am, on the whole, in favour of strong workers’ rights. I have been a small-business employer for the better part of three decades; I have, in that time, seen the casual British employment market behave both better and worse than it ought. So no, this is not the column where I argue that the British worker is too much protected.

But the Workers’ Rights Bill, six months in, is now meaningfully damaging the British labour market, and I think someone has to say so before the present trajectory gets worse.

Let me give you the picture as it is on the ground. Day-one rights to claim unfair dismissal. Day-one rights to flexible working applications. New, more generous, statutory sick pay. Tightened restrictions on zero-hours contracts. New protections against fire-and-rehire. New duties on harassment. A fresh framework for trade-union recognition, with a lower threshold. A new “probationary” concept, the legal architecture of which has not, despite repeated industry pleading, yet been settled.

Each of these reforms, taken on its own, has a defensible policy case behind it. Each of them, taken in isolation, would probably do more good than harm. The trouble is what happens when you put them all together, in a single piece of legislation, with implementation rules that arrive in tranches over eighteen months, in front of a labour market in which around 96 per cent of all employment relationships are run by SMEs that do not have an HR department.

What happens is this. The SME owner sits down with her perfectly nice high-street solicitor in early March, walks through the new exposures, and concludes, quite rationally, that hiring an additional UK employee is now an exposure of approximately £80,000 to £150,000 over the first 18 months, on a tribunal-risk-adjusted basis. She doesn’t hire. She uses an agency contractor. She uses a part-time freelancer. She uses, increasingly, a Lisbon-based subcontractor on a B2B services agreement, because the legal architecture of that arrangement is, by happy coincidence, simpler in 2026 than the legal architecture of an employer-employee relationship in Britain.

Multiply this by the country’s 1.5 million SMEs, and you get the data the Office for National Statistics published last month. Net hiring in firms below 50 employees has fallen for the third consecutive quarter, the longest contraction in any non-recessionary period since records began. Use of contractors and consultants has risen 22 per cent year on year. Graduate hiring at SMEs, which was already declining for AI-related reasons, is down a further 14 per cent.

I want to be careful here. I do not blame the people who designed the Bill. The intentions are recognisably good. The impact on the worst-behaved British employers, the call-centre operators, the gig economy edge cases, the Sports Direct end of the warehouse industry, has, on the available data, been broadly positive, and I am pleased about that. The damage is being done in the middle: in the small office, the small studio, the small manufacturer, the small specialist consultancy, where the additional legal exposure is meaningful relative to revenue and the absence of an HR function makes compliance disproportionately expensive.

What would I do? Reverse, immediately, the day-one unfair dismissal right, and replace it with a six-month probationary period during which fair-process protection applies but no tribunal route exists. Couple this with a statutory cap on tribunal awards in firms below 50 employees, indexed to turnover. Give an unequivocal carve-out for under-25 employment to address the hidden graduate-hiring effect we are about to see in earnest. And, finally, set out, in plain English, the “probationary” framework that has been left, deliberately or otherwise, ambiguous.

There is nothing in any of this that compromises the worker who has been with a firm for years and has been treated badly, which is the case the legislators were thinking about when they drafted the original. There is, however, a great deal in it that lowers the legal exposure of taking on the next graduate, the next mother returning to work, the next 19-year-old leaving school in Stoke. We have, in the present design, made it materially harder for those exact people to find a foot on the ladder.

Labour came into office promising to be the party of work. The Workers’ Rights Bill, on its present implementation track, has begun to be the party of unemployment, by quiet accident. Six months from now, the data will be unambiguous. There is still time to fix it. There is, increasingly, not much time after that.

Read more:
Day-one rights, six-figure tribunals: how the Workers’ Rights Bill is killing hiring before it starts

Resilience is one of those words that gets used a lot in business. But when you strip it back, it’s not complicated. It simply means being able to keep moving forward when things don’t go to plan.

And if the last few years have shown us anything, it’s that plans rarely stay fixed for long. Markets shift, technology moves quickly and economic uncertainty can appear with very little warning.

For leaders, especially those running small and medium-sized businesses, the challenge isn’t avoiding change. It’s helping your team deal with it.

In my experience, resilient businesses are almost always led by resilient people.

Over the past 25 years working in fire safety and security at Chubb, I’ve seen plenty of organisations face disruption. Some adapt quickly and come out stronger. Others struggle because uncertainty unsettles the team and slows decision-making.

More often than not, the difference comes down to leadership. Resilient leaders create an environment where people stay focused, tackle problems head-on and keep moving forward even when things feel uncertain.

Why leadership matters more than ever

There’s growing evidence that the quality of leadership has a direct impact on how well organisations cope with change.

The CIPD Good Work Index 2025 highlights how strongly supportive leadership and good line management influence employee engagement, motivation and wellbeing. The report shows that when people feel supported by their managers and trusted in their roles, they’re far more likely to stay motivated and perform well.

For SME leaders, that’s an important point.

Resilience isn’t something that only large organisations with big HR departments can build. In fact, smaller businesses often have an advantage because leaders are closer to their teams and communication tends to be more direct.

That visibility means leaders have a real opportunity to shape how people respond when challenges arise.

Resilience is something you build

One of the biggest misconceptions about resilience is that it’s something you either have or you don’t. In reality, resilience is something that can be developed.

Teams become more resilient when they’re trusted to solve problems, encouraged to learn from mistakes and given the confidence to take ownership of challenges. For leaders, creating that environment starts with the way we react when things go wrong.

It’s easy in business to look for someone to blame when a problem appears. But resilient organisations tend to take a different approach. Instead of focusing on who made the mistake, they focus on what can be learned and how the issue can be solved.

That shift in mindset builds confidence across the team. People feel safer speaking up, sharing ideas and taking responsibility.

Give people the space to step up

Another key part of building resilience is trust.

Strong leaders understand that people grow when they’re given the chance to think for themselves. When employees are empowered to make decisions and solve problems, they build confidence and adaptability. Over time, that confidence becomes one of the organisation’s biggest strengths.

Transparency also plays a big role here.

Periods of change can easily create uncertainty. And when leaders stay quiet, people often assume the worst. Being open about challenges helps teams understand the bigger picture and encourages everyone to pull together.

It doesn’t mean having all the answers. It simply means being honest about the situation and focusing on what can be done next.

Leadership shouldn’t sit with one person

Another lesson I’ve learned over the years is that resilience doesn’t sit with one individual. The strongest organisations develop leadership across the whole business.

Future leaders often appear in unexpected places, which is something I’ve discovered at Chubb through Building Great Leaders – a framework we’ve created to help our people develop their leadership competency, no matter what their role is. Someone who shows initiative, supports colleagues or steps up during a difficult project may well become a great leader with the right encouragement.

Businesses that invest time in developing people early tend to cope better when challenges arise. When people feel capable and trusted, they’re far more likely to step forward rather than step back. And that makes a huge difference when change inevitably comes along.

Culture sets the tone

In many ways, resilience spreads through culture. Teams take their cues from the behaviour of their leaders. If leaders remain calm, focus on solutions and encourage collaboration, those behaviours quickly become the norm.

But the opposite is also true. If leaders panic or avoid difficult conversations, that uncertainty spreads just as quickly.

That’s why leadership development matters so much. It’s not simply about preparing someone for a management role. It’s about helping people develop the mindset and skills needed to navigate uncertainty.

Helping teams face whatever comes next

Change is part of business. Technology evolves, customer expectations shift and markets rarely stay still. Leaders can’t remove that uncertainty. What we can do is shape how our teams respond to it.

The most resilient organisations are the ones where people feel confident tackling problems, supporting one another and adapting when circumstances change. And that starts with leadership.

Because in the end, resilient leadership isn’t about having every answer. It’s about giving your team the confidence to face whatever comes next.

Read more:
How resilient leaders help their teams thrive through change

I have been having, all week, more or less the same telephone conversation with hospitality clients. It begins with a polite catch-up about the Easter trade.

It moves, after about ninety seconds, to the 2026 rates revaluation, which has, by some grim miracle, managed to fall on the same set of operators who have already been hit hardest by every other policy of the last five years. It ends, almost without exception, with the client saying some version of: “We may have to think about closing the Whitechapel site.” Or the Bristol site. Or the Edinburgh site. Or the High Wycombe site. The town moves; the sentence does not.

Business rates, in this country, are the levy nobody talks about until they are paying them, after which they are the levy nobody can stop talking about. They are the property tax on commercial premises that has, against all logic, become a sort of operational tax on the use of bricks and mortar in the productive economy, while the warehouse-and-fulfilment side of the same economy, Amazon, Ocado, the third-party logistics estate that fulfils the Boxing Day shopping, pays a fraction. We have, in essence, set up a tax system that subsidises the click and penalises the visit.

The 2026 revaluation, in its full and ugly bloom, has now landed. Pubs and restaurants, on the new ratings, will pay an average of 14 per cent more than they did. Hairdressers, dry cleaners and the residual high-street independents are paying between 9 and 19 per cent more. Hotels in central locations have been hit by between 18 and 26 per cent. The promised multiplier reform, which Labour campaigned on in 2024 and which has been the subject of three consecutive rounds of consultation, has not been delivered; the small-business multiplier remains slightly lower than the large, but the gap is too narrow to do meaningful work, and both have been ratcheted up by inflation.

Meanwhile, the same revaluation has handed substantial cuts to two categories: out-of-town warehouses, where land values, on the very technical basis used by the Valuation Office, have come off slightly; and the central London prime office estate, which, despite hybrid working, retains a bizarrely generous treatment in the new schedule. The very part of the economy that sucks employment out of high streets and fulfilment out of independent retailers has had its tax bill cut. The very part of the economy that we keep claiming to want to nurture, the visit, the room, the table, the till, has had its tax bill loaded.

This is not, I should say, a partisan complaint. The architecture of the British rates system is bipartisan in its absurdity, and every Chancellor since Geoffrey Howe has, with an air of regret, added another wrinkle. It is the perfectly imperfect example of a tax system that has been reformed for so long that nobody can now remember what it was originally for. The historic rationale, that local rates funded local public goods such as roads and lighting, has, for forty years, been replaced by a national pool, redistributed by the Treasury, with predictably poor results.

What, then, is to be done? Several things. First, the simple and overdue: a 12.5 per cent VAT band for hospitality, paid for in the medium term by the broadening of business rates to the warehouse and fulfilment estate. Second, the radical: a serious proposal to abolish business rates altogether and replace them with a simple commercial-property land value tax, which the Henry George Society is, at this point, almost too tired to keep proposing. Third, the boringly fundamental: a return to a meaningful local share of the rates collected, so that town councils have a direct interest in the prosperity of the businesses on their patch, and not merely a planning interest in their square footage.

Each of those proposals has been on the table for, at minimum, two decades. Each of them has been studied to death by a sequence of cross-Whitehall reviews, with the result that we have a vast, multi-volume archive of policy work and, on the ground, the same broken tax. The reason it does not change is the same reason any tax does not change: the people doing well out of the present arrangement are organised, articulate and represented; the people doing badly out of it are exhausted, dispersed and busy.

But the price of the present settlement is, finally, becoming visible. Closures of independents are at a record. Hotel occupancy in regional cities is below pre-pandemic levels. The high-street vacancy rate, as I wrote last week, is at 14.2 per cent. None of these numbers are sustainable in the medium term, and none of them will be reversed by another speech about “high-street renewal”. They will be reversed only by structural reform of the rates system. We are, after twelve years of rotating Treasury reviews, running out of time and out of the small businesses who could afford to wait.

The next move belongs to the Chancellor. So does the Whitechapel restaurant, on the present trajectory, by midsummer.

Read more:
Business rates: Britain’s most punishing levy on the very firms it claims to champion

Read more:
The April Cost Squeeze: Why Small Businesses Must Plan Ahead, Not Catch Up

Easter, in this country, has become a kind of trading-figures ECG: a thin grey line for most of the quarter, a sharp peak around the bank holidays, and then, on the day after, the slow flat-line that resumes for another six weeks.

We had the peak. The trade press, with its usual cheery instinct, called it “a strong four-day uplift in footfall”. Bunting was deployed on the front page of more than one daily newspaper. By Tuesday morning, the actual takings, which is what we should have been looking at all along, had returned, on the latest UK Hospitality and BRC numbers, to the trend rate they were on in February.

This is the rhythm of the British high street and hospitality sector in 2026, and the rhythm is not healthy.

I went, over the Easter weekend, to Bath. I have been going to Bath, on and off, for thirty years. The old ratio I used to associate with the city, independents to chains, around 60–40 — has flipped. The Pulteney Bridge end has gone the way of every English provincial centre: a Caffè Nero, a Greggs, a Boots, a Starbucks, a Tesco Express, a Joe & The Juice and an empty Carluccio’s with a ‘to let’ sign for the third year running. The independents are still there, just; but they are increasingly clustered in two streets, and the rest is corporate plain-text with bunny ears. We had a perfectly good lunch at one of the holdouts, who told me, at the till, that her landlord had increased the rent another 11 per cent at lease renewal in February. She was, she said, “seeing how the year goes”. Translation: she was eight months from closing.

This is not a story about Bath. It is a story about every English town and city outside the M25. The high-street vacancy rate, on the present LDC numbers, is sitting at 14.2 per cent, the highest non-pandemic figure on record. In the smaller towns, that figure rises closer to 19. The hospitality side is no better. The number of full-service restaurants registered for VAT has fallen for the third successive quarter. The number of independent cafés, which had been one of the few resilient categories through the last decade, fell for the first time on record.

What has happened? The same things that have been happening for a decade. Business rates have not been reformed. Energy is more expensive than in any comparable Western European market. The minimum wage has gone up, for sound reasons, but at a pace that has not been matched by labour productivity in the kitchen, the bar or the tills. Employer NICs, having gone up in 2025, did not go down. A flurry of well-meaning new costs around environmental compliance, single-use packaging, and the new tipping legislation have added another 1.5 to 3 per cent to operating costs in the typical mid-tier restaurant.

And, perhaps most damaging of all, the consumer has lost confidence. The Easter footfall numbers I mentioned earlier have a quiet B-side: average spend per visit was down 4 per cent year-on-year. People are coming, in slightly higher numbers than they did, and then spending less. The bottle of supermarket prosecco at home with the family on Sunday has, very quietly, replaced the kind of celebratory midweek dinner that used to keep a town centre alive between bank holidays. The middle-class disposable income is not what it was, and the middle-class hospitality habit is the first thing to go.

The strategic response, on the part of government, has been to commission another high-street commission. There have been, by my count, seven of these since 2010, all of them well-intentioned, all of them written by people whose professional time is mostly spent in places not on the high street, and most of them shelved within twelve months of publication. We do not have a high-street policy in this country. We have a high-street regret.

What would I do, again? VAT at 12.5 per cent for hospitality. A statutory presumption against above-inflation rent increases for shops below £75,000 a year in rateable value. A meaningful business-rates multiplier reform that taxes the warehouse, not the corner café. An end to the special pleading from the largest grocery chains for the planning treatment that has gutted the very high streets they now wring their hands about.

And — though this is the hardest of all — a quiet, urgent national conversation about whether the British public actually want to keep their town centres. Because the present consumer behaviour, which is to say, click-and-delivery from a warehouse fifty miles away with the occasional bank-holiday cameo at the local independent, will not, on its own, sustain a town centre. The market alone, when it has been left to it, has not solved this problem in any developed economy. We will need to choose, deliberately, to keep the rooms.

Or we will have to get used to the bunny ears, the empty Carluccio’s, the sympathetic ‘to let’ signs and the rest of the architecture of decline. Easter has, in the meantime, been and gone. The flat line, on the cardiac monitor, has resumed.

Read more:
Easter on the high street: bunny ears, empty tills and a hospitality sector running on fumes

It is now eighteen months into the second Trump administration, and the British exporter, that politely undervalued figure who keeps the country’s current account in any sort of order at all, has just been handed another tariff bill.

American duty on UK speciality chemicals went up another 5 per cent on 1 April. UK whisky, that grand old Scottish workhorse, is now being charged the better part of 25 per cent in some American import categories. UK premium engineering, particularly aerospace components, has been hit by a delightful new “national security review surcharge” of 12 per cent, the existence of which one of my friends in Washington explained to me, last weekend, with the air of a man explaining a particularly inventive parking ticket.

And the British government’s response to all this has been, to a first approximation, the silence of an administration which, having spent eighteen months treating Donald Trump as a kind of category error, has now run out of category. There is no transatlantic trade strategy. There is no minister for it. There is, instead, a series of polite communiqués from the Department of Business, the Foreign Office and the trade envoys, who, having spent the spring being warmly received in mid-Atlantic states, return to find that none of the people they met in those mid-Atlantic states are particularly relevant to the actual decision making in Washington.

I should say, before this becomes a column the present American administration will read with pleasure, that I am no fan of the Trumpist trade philosophy. The tariffs are, on every honest economic measure, bad for American consumers as well as British producers. The protectionism is largely incoherent. The administration is using national-security justifications for sectors that have, on closer inspection, no national-security implications at all. The whole programme is a mid-term industrial policy dressed up as a security policy and pursued, in the manner of all such things, with rather more energy than care.

But it is happening, and it is not going to stop happening, because the political coalition in the United States that supports it has not weakened. The British exporter must, in 2026, plan as if the tariff regime is permanent, because, on most plausible scenarios, it is. And the British government must, accordingly, decide what its actual transatlantic strategy is.

The instinct in Whitehall has been to play this game cool, hoping for a “mini-deal” on professional services or intellectual property that takes a few items off the tariff list while preserving the broader UK position. This is not, I am sorry to say, going to work. The Trump White House does not do mini-deals; it does deals. And the deals it does are bilateral, transactional, and visible. To get one, the British government would need to put something on the table large enough and visible enough to be worth a presidential signature. The list of things in that category is short: the digital services tax; pharmaceutical pricing on the NHS; agricultural standards; Chagos.

Each of those is politically expensive at home. Each of them has, somewhere in Whitehall, a reasoned defence. None of them have been seriously discussed in the present cabinet as bargaining chips, because the present cabinet has, broadly, decided that talking about Trump in those terms is undignified. The price of dignity, as ever, is paid by exporters.

What I would like to see is, frankly, an end to the dignity. Get serious. Identify, openly, two or three concessions that the United Kingdom is willing to make in exchange for the removal of tariffs on the four or five sectors where the British competitive advantage is greatest: speciality chemicals, premium engineering, premium spirits, biopharma. Do the deal. Survive the politics at home. Move on. The country could do with the £6 to £8 billion in re-opened export receipts that a serious deal would generate over a Parliament.

Then, more importantly, build out the missing market diversification. British exporters have been, for at least a decade, dangerously concentrated on the United States and the European Union. The world has, in the meantime, had a Mexico, an India, an Indonesia, a Vietnam, all of which are now larger and more dynamic markets than they were when the present trade strategy was last reviewed. UK Export Finance has the budget, on paper, to back this kind of diversification. It does not, on present operations, do so meaningfully. That is fixable in an afternoon, by changing its mandate.

The country that exports its way through a Trump tariff regime is the country that, at the same time, opens three other markets. We are, on present form, doing neither. The exporters I speak to are, in increasing numbers, talking quietly to their continental subsidiaries about whether to relocate production. They will, if we don’t move fast, take that conversation to its logical conclusion.

Westminster, please. Wake up. The plane to Washington takes off twice a day; somebody serious needs to be on it.

Read more:
Trump’s tariffs are squeezing British exporters – and Westminster is asleep at the wheel

It has been just over twelve months since Britain abolished the non-domiciled tax regime, and the political class which engineered the change has, in the manner of a man who has lost a bet, gone deathly quiet on the subject.

There has been no triumphant statement of revenue raised. There has been no celebratory press release on “fairness restored”. There has, instead, been a series of releases from rival Mediterranean and Gulf jurisdictions, each one trailing the arrival of another set of British residents who used, until recently, to be ours. Italy is now the largest single beneficiary. Dubai is second. Switzerland, despite the snow, is having a banner year.

I am not, before any reflexive ideological reaction sets in, an unqualified defender of the old regime. The non-dom system was, in places, indefensible. It allowed, for instance, multi-generational use of the resident-non-domiciled status by people whose families had not seriously been domiciled abroad for decades. The 2017 deemed-domicile reforms, the ones the previous government did, against considerable lobbying, get right, closed most of the worst abuses, and at the time I supported them.

What we have done in the last twelve months is something quite different. We have, in effect, told a large group of internationally mobile high-earners, many of them not Britons at all, but global figures who chose, in the way that talented people sometimes choose, to put their family lives, charitable foundations, art collections and businesses in this country, that we no longer particularly value their being here. They have, for the most part, taken us at our word.

The figures, where they exist, are sobering. HMRC quietly published, last month, a 9 per cent year-on-year decline in stamp duty receipts on properties above £5 million, predominantly in central London. Mayfair and Belgravia office rents, which had been holding up against general London weakness, have softened in the last two quarters in a way that estate agents are too professional to attribute publicly to anything in particular. London philanthropic giving, the donors’ list of every major arts institution and many of our hospitals, has shifted; one major teaching hospital trust I know of has lost 14 per cent of its annual donor income. The Treasury, of course, does not collect a separate line item for charitable receipt loss as a result of policy change, so this number does not appear in the Office for Budget Responsibility tables. It will, however, appear in the closure notice of any number of smaller charities by 2028.

Then there is the City salary effect. A surprising number of Goldman, JP Morgan, and Citadel London-based partners have shifted their booked location to Milan, Geneva, or, increasingly, Dubai. Their families, in many cases, follow. The schools they used to fill in central London have noticed; admissions to the major preparatory schools fell, last September, by between 4 and 7 per cent, the largest single-year drop in living memory. The London restaurant scene, which depends on the £200-a-head business diner more than it likes to admit, is feeling the absence in real time.

I write this not in defence of any particular individual, but because the cumulative effect, and this is the part the Treasury repeatedly underestimates, is large, slow, and politically unmeasurable. There is no rally for the loss of a non-dom. There is no by-election that turns on it. There is, however, a slow grinding-down of London’s appeal as a global wealth hub, and that appeal, like the appeal of a great restaurant, is built up over decades and lost in a matter of years.

What does the Treasury say to all this? Privately, and I have asked, it says, broadly, two things. First, that the absolute number of non-doms is small. Second, that the headline revenue raised by the abolition was “in line with forecast”. Both of these things may be true. They are also irrelevant. The non-dom system was never, primarily, a source of direct revenue. It was a magnet. The charitable giving, the property purchases, the cultural patronage, the wealth-management industry that grew up around it, the hedge funds that anchored in London because of it — these were the second-order effects. They are the things you cannot put back together once you have decided, in a fit of theoretical even-handedness, to dismantle them.

There is, finally, a political point. Nigel Lawson once observed that the difficulty with tax policy is that revenue has consequences and consequences have lag. The current Chancellor will not be the one paying the bill for the loss of the non-dom regime. That bill will land, in 2028 or 2029, on the desk of someone else, who will inherit a London that has lost, quietly, a meaningful slice of its global gravity. There will be no headlines. There will only, slowly, be fewer people in the room.

Italy, by the way, will publish its end-of-year statistics on incoming high-net-worth residents in a few months. I would put a small wager, and I am a sober man, that it will set a record. We have, between us, given Rome the most expensive Brexit dividend it never asked for.

Read more:
The non-doms have packed their suitcases and the tax base is going with them

It is the morning of 6 April, the first day of the new British tax year, and I have spent the last hour staring at a payroll spreadsheet that has, by some entirely legal arithmetic, just deducted another £1,360 a month from the operating margin of our smallest subsidiary.

We have not hired anyone new. We have not given anyone a pay rise. We have not bought a new piece of kit. The state has, simply, in the manner of a particularly assiduous Italian waiter, returned to the table to refill our glass with a wine we did not order.

Welcome to the British New Tax Year. It is a bit like a New Year’s Eve party, if New Year’s Eve had been organised, in a hurry, by your accountant.

Let us tot up what has actually changed today, on a payroll for a fifteen-person company with an average salary of £42,000. Employer National Insurance, having gone up to 15 per cent in April 2025, has not gone down. The threshold remains depressed. That continues to cost the company, on present figures, around £19,500 a year more than it cost two years ago. The minimum wage has gone up another 4.6 per cent. The apprenticeship-levy contribution, despite the “Growth and Skills” rebrand, still bites at the same point. The dividend allowance, having been £5,000 a few years ago, sits this morning at £200, with the Chancellor briefing, quietly, that she would like, eventually, to abolish it. The capital gains rate on shares has crept up by another point.

The business-rates revaluation, in its glorious 2026 manifestation, has now landed properly. For our hospitality client in central Bristol, the bill has gone up by 19 per cent. For our small manufacturer in Wiltshire, by 7. The promised reform of the rates multiplier, which Labour campaigned on in 2024 and which has been kicked, gently and apologetically, down a series of consultations, has not, in fact, materialised.

Inheritance tax on agricultural and business property, which used to be a relatively quiet corner of the British tax code, has been narrowed in three successive moves under different headings. The cumulative effect is that a perfectly ordinary family business, turnover under £10 million, two locations, twelve people, is now, on its founder’s death, a tax event that consumes between 20 and 28 per cent of the going-concern value. There is no reasonable way to plan for this without setting up structures whose primary function is to mock the spirit of the legislation, which is what every reasonable person now does, and which is, again, why the country has the productivity figures it has.

I am, before this column slides into pure complaint, not unsympathetic to the bind every Chancellor faces. Demographic pressure is real. Defence procurement is large. Adult social care is unsolved. NHS productivity is, by international comparison, an embarrassment. There are, eventually, only so many places to find money. I get all that, and I have written it before in this magazine.

What I object to is the silent, year-on-year, ratchet-and-pawl character of the way British SMEs and middle-tier earners now experience tax. There is no rally. There is no raised voice. There is no front-page coverage. There is just, every April 6, another spreadsheet, another silent £19,500 here, another £4,200 there, and the polite Treasury press operation insisting that no “tax rate” has been raised. Technically true. Practically a fiction.

I would also note, for any future Chancellor reading: there are limits. Limits to what fifteen years of stealth tightening can be done to an SME sector before that sector reorganises itself in ways the Treasury does not enjoy. Limits to the number of family businesses that will pay another generation’s worth of inheritance tax before they sell to a Dutch trade buyer. Limits to the number of British software founders who will spin up their next venture in Wilmslow rather than Wilmington. Each year, the limit moves a bit closer.

What this morning has reminded me, on its first cup of coffee, is that we are now in the part of the British tax cycle where stealth is the policy and the policy is denial. We will pretend, in newspapers, that nothing has changed today. We will pretend, on the Treasury website, that the changes are minor. We will, in the supplementary OBR fiscal note, find a footnote on page 87 that says the cumulative incidence on the SME sector in this Parliament has been the largest in any Parliament since 1976. Nobody will read it. Nobody, apparently, in Whitehall has.

Happy New Tax Year. The boot, if you were wondering, has been lifted only to come down again. The Italian waiter is back. The bottle, you’ll notice, is no longer free.

Read more:
Happy New Tax Year: same kicking, slightly higher boot

I have a friend who runs a glassworks in Yorkshire, third-generation, family-owned, the kind of business that produces, for not much money, the small clear bottles that sit on the shelves of the most exclusive perfume houses in Paris.

I rang him last week to ask how trading was. He answered the phone with a single word, which I cannot repeat in this magazine, and then explained, in a tone I have heard once or twice before in my life, that he had spent the morning working out at what point in the calendar he was going to have to extinguish his furnaces.

Extinguishing a furnace, in case you have not had cause to think about this before, is approximately the worst thing that can happen to a glassworks. Once a furnace is cold, the lining cracks; once the lining cracks, you are looking at six months of rebuild before you can produce a single bottle. It is, in industrial terms, the equivalent of a cardiac arrest. And yet several British manufacturing furnaces, in glass, in ceramics, in chemicals, in steel, have either gone cold this winter or are, on the present trajectory, going to.

The reason, in a single number, is energy. British industrial users in 2026 pay, on average, £196 per megawatt-hour for electricity. American industrial users pay around £52. French industrial users, who, for reasons the Treasury has never quite articulated, get to dip into a heavily subsidised national nuclear baseload, pay £64. Our German competitors have been forced down to about £80 by a series of emergency measures that are now, awkwardly, being extended through 2028. The British manufacturer is, as ever, the outlier.

We dress the situation up as climate leadership. We are, the Treasury insists, “front-running” the decarbonisation curve. Our prices reflect a “mature market” for renewables. The carbon-pricing mechanism “sends the right signals”. Each of these phrases has a kind of grim Civil Service music to it, and each of them is wrong. Our industrial energy prices are not high because we are decarbonising. They are high because we are decarbonising badly: with no domestic gas backbone, no serious nuclear build-out, no functioning interconnector strategy, and a wholesale market design that prices everything at the marginal gas plant even when the marginal plant isn’t running.

Each of those flaws is fixable. None of them is being fixed. The Energy Department is consumed, instead, with consumer-facing slogans about heat pumps. Heat pumps are fine. They will not, on their own or together, save my Yorkshire friend’s glassworks.

The macro picture is the part that ought to alarm Whitehall. Britain has lost about 18 per cent of its manufacturing capacity in the last six years. We have lost the third of our cement we used to make. We have lost most of our flat glass. We have lost two of our remaining four virgin steel sites. We are about to lose, by my reckoning, the bulk of our specialty chemicals. Each of these closures is announced individually, with a flurry of regret from the local MP and a politely worded statement from the trade body, and each is folded back into a national narrative about the “transition”. There is no transition. There is a substitution. We are substituting the British factory for the foreign factory.

We are also substituting the British job. The 50,000 to 60,000 manufacturing jobs lost in this Parliament are not, despite the warm words about “green retraining”, being replaced. The retraining schemes I have looked at, in detail, produce, mostly, lower-paid work in lower-skilled service sectors. The wage premium of British manufacturing, the reason a Yorkshire glassworker, on his late shift, takes home meaningfully more than the supermarket logistics worker on his, is, slowly, being smoothed away. The country is about to discover, in another decade, what every economy that has lost its industrial base discovers: that the social fabric of the place where the factory used to be does not survive the smoothing.

What would actually save the situation? A formal industrial energy price cap, indexed to French levels, paid for in the short run by an explicit ring-fenced borrowing facility, on the basis that this is what every other major Western economy has done. A long-overdue sit-down with the Office for Nuclear Regulation about the absurd timescales for British small modular reactors, where we are, somehow, behind the Romanians. A serious carbon-border adjustment that doesn’t allow Chinese steel to continue arriving, untaxed, into a country whose own steelmakers are paying every conceivable carbon premium.

And, while we are at it, a public statement from this government, and any other that may follow it, that British manufacturing is not, contra the present mood music, a regrettable hangover from the Industrial Revolution. It is, in any country with a serious view of itself, a strategic asset. Switzerland thinks so. Germany thinks so. Japan thinks so. South Korea thinks so. The fact that Britain has somehow let itself be persuaded otherwise is the policy mistake of the decade.

My Yorkshire friend, by the way, has another six weeks. After that the furnaces, in the nicest possible way, go out. He will not, when they do, blame the planet. He will blame the country.

Read more:
British manufacturing is being electrocuted to death, and we are calling it net zero

There is a particular conversation I have been having, more often than I would like, with senior partners at the big professional-services firms.

It tends to take place at someone else’s book launch, over a reluctant glass of warm white, and it always begins with the partner saying something like: “Oh, well, you know, we’re thinking very seriously about graduate intake this year.” The verb is usually “rationalising”. The number is usually “down 30 per cent”. The reason is, increasingly, the same. They have, between us, decided that the work that used to be done by a 22-year-old can now be done, mostly, by a model.

Each of them, on their own, has a defensible case. The AI tools available in 2026 are, frankly, very good at the bottom end of professional work. They will do you a first draft of a memo, a first cut of a financial model, a first read of a contract, a first marketing plan, and they will do it in a fraction of the time. The marginal economics, for any partnership, are unanswerable. So the partners answer them: graduate hiring goes down, AI licence cost goes up, this year’s P&L looks fine.

Multiply that conversation by, say, the eighty largest firms in the country, and you arrive at a number that ought to send the Treasury into a cold sweat. We are looking, on present trajectory, at a 30 to 40 per cent reduction in graduate hiring across the British professional-services sector by 2027. That is not a soft trend; it is already in published intake numbers. And we are doing it, collectively, without a single board having sat down and asked the obvious question, which is: where, exactly, does the next generation of senior partners come from?

Because here is the problem nobody at that book-launch wanted to discuss. The work that AI is now doing for £14 a month, per seat, was the same work that, for fifty years, served as the apprenticeship for everyone now sitting in a corner office. You learned how to write a memo by writing memos. You learned how to model a deal by modelling deals. You learned how to read a contract by reading them, badly, and being shouted at by a senior associate who had once read them badly, themselves. The output of that labour was secondary; the labour was the training. Removing the labour, in other words, is not just a cost decision. It is a strategic decision about whether you wish, in fifteen years’ time, to have any senior people at all.

I am, generally, a fan of AI. I run businesses that have used it well. I think the people howling about a robot apocalypse are, mostly, the same people who in 1995 were howling about the death of the bookshop, and the bookshop is, surprisingly, still here. But I think we are about to make a serious, system-level mistake, and I think we are about to make it because every individual board has the wrong incentive set.

Consider the unintended consequences. The first wave of casualties will be the regional university, the working-class graduate, the first-in-family-to-go-to-uni who took on £60,000 of debt on the understanding that there was a job at the end of it. They are about to discover that the job has, quietly, been replaced. The second wave will be the firms themselves, who, in eight to ten years, will look around their partnership rooms and notice a hole, a missing year-cohort of mid-level associates, the people who would have been promoted, who weren’t hired in the first place. The third wave will be the British professional-services brand itself, which has spent fifty years exporting expertise globally and which depends, fundamentally, on a domestic conveyor belt of talent.

What would I do? Make AI use a tax-allowable expense if and only if a firm holds graduate hiring constant, in real terms, for the same year. The HMRC mechanism for this exists; it is the same one used for R&D credits. Tie the carrot of AI deductibility to the stick of graduate retention. Watch the numbers stabilise inside one fiscal year. It is not as elegant as letting the market decide; it is, however, what governments are supposed to do when an entire profession is in the middle of a coordination failure.

There is a wider point about Britain’s labour market here. We have spent fifteen years gently informing our young people that they should be “entrepreneurial”, by which we mostly mean we have no jobs for them. The next chapter of that story, in which AI eats the bottom rung of the few employed graduate ladders we still have, will be very ugly indeed. We are running out of ladders. And, contra the AI evangelists, the country still requires people with the experience of having climbed one.

I would put the Lincolnshire electrician of last week in a long-running argument with the Magic Circle partner of this week. Both, in their different ways, are watching the same thing. The British training system, for plumber and tax barrister alike, has, very quietly, started to break. The right time to fix it is now.

Read more:
AI is quietly making graduates redundant: we will regret this inside a decade

In a recent Acas survey, employers and employees were asked which three changes in the Employment Rights Act 2025 would have the biggest impact in their workplace.

Surprisingly, the new rights on Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) topped the list for both groups, named by 43% of employers and 36% of employees. The reduction in the unfair dismissal qualifying period from two years to six months was the second most significant change (31% of employers and 30% of employees). Employers ranked the new paternity leave day-one rights as the third-largest reform, whereas employees said it was easier access to flexible working arrangements.

The SSP reforms take effect from 6 April 2026, aiming to improve financial security, particularly for part-time employees and those in low-paid jobs. While more employees will qualify for SSP, employers will face increased costs and compliance requirements, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises.

Before looking at the reforms and what employers can do to prepare for them, let’s consider the current arrangements.

What is the current SSP framework?

An employee must be an “eligible employee” and earn at least the Lower Earnings Limit (LEL), which is currently £125 per week. Even if employees are eligible, SSP is payable only from the fourth consecutive day of sickness, as the first three days are unpaid waiting days.

It is estimated that around 1.3 million employees receive no SSP at all, and many lose pay for only short periods when unwell. Some face the choice of working while ill or losing income. This can spread illness in the workplace and reduce productivity.

What is changing from 6 April 2026?

Approximately 25% of employees only receive SSP (rather than contractual sick pay), and the SSP changes below will have a significant impact.

• Removal of the Lower Earnings Limit, and employees will no longer need to meet the LEL to qualify for SSP.
• A new earnings‑linked calculation and SSP will be paid at 80% of normal weekly earnings (NWE) unless the SSP flat rate is lower.
• SSP will be payable from day one of sickness absence, as the Employment Rights Act 2025 abolishes the three unpaid waiting days.
• SSP will increase from £118.75 to £123.25 a week on 6 April 2026.

It is important to mention atypical workers, such as zero-hours and agency workers, as well as seasonal and irregular-hours staff. Establishing NWE is not always straightforward because of their fluctuating pay and variable working patterns. Employers can determine NWE, for example, by averaging pay over the previous 8-12 weeks or by following the relevant contractual arrangements to ensure SSP reflects actual earning patterns.

What do the SSP changes mean for employers?

The scope of SSP entitlements is significantly widened. As well as administrative adjustments to update policies and payroll processes, the reforms carry a cost implication for organisations of all sizes.

The Government estimates that removing waiting days and abolishing the LEL, combined with introducing the 80% earnings‑linked calculation, will increase employer SSP costs by around £450 million a year. Although a significant sum, it equates to roughly £15 more per employee according to the Government’s impact assessment. Crucially, earlier access to SSP may boost productivity by allowing employees to stay home when unwell without feeling compelled to attend work.

Employer concerns about increased sickness absence could be mitigated through strengthened sickness management. This includes conducting return‑to‑work interviews promptly, even after short periods of illness, which can help to identify underlying issues early and reduce avoidable absences. It can also include structured return-to-work planning, phased returns, and temporary adjustments.

How can employers prepare for the changes?

• Update payroll systems for earnings‑linked SSP and day‑one entitlement.
• Review and update sickness absence policies, contracts and employee handbooks and communicate these changes to employees.

• Budget for increased SSP.
• Identify roles or departments most affected by the wider eligibility rules.

• Train managers and HR on the new regime.
• Strengthen sickness absence management processes.
• Establish the number of atypical workers and how their normal weekly earnings are calculated.

Conclusion

The April 2026 SSP reforms represent a major shift in the UK’s approach to sick pay, expanding access and enhancing financial protection for employees. While these changes introduce additional costs and compliance requirements for employers, early preparation will support a compliant and well‑managed transition.

By reviewing systems and policies now, organisations can ensure they are ready for the new SSP regime and are equipped to support staff and manage sickness absence effectively.

Read more:
Imminent changes to Statutory Sick Pay: What employers need to know

I had a frankly demoralising conversation last week with a man who runs a perfectly successful family-owned electrical contractor in Lincolnshire.

Forty-eight people, mostly men over forty, a fleet of vans, a yard that smells of warm copper. He wanted, he said, to take on three apprentices this year. Wanted, please note: he had the work, the mentors, the kit, the customer demand. He had abandoned the attempt by Christmas. The reason, in his own words, was that the system designed to deliver him three apprentices in 2026 has been built, at every level, by and for people who have never tried to use it.

And we wonder, in this country, why we have a skills shortage.

It is a year since Labour’s much-trailed “Growth and Skills” rebadging of the Apprenticeship Levy, in which the original Levy, itself only nine years old, was tweaked to allow, in principle, more flexibility in spend, more shorter courses, more so-called modular qualifications. The substance, on the ground, has been less than impressive. Some 53 per cent of all Levy spend in 2025-26 still went on “senior leader” and “level 7” qualifications, the apprenticeships-in-name-only that have for years allowed the big four accounting firms and the giant consultancies to dress up their normal MBA training as a cost to the public purse.

Meanwhile, the share of Levy spend going to under-19s, which is to say to actual school-leavers learning an actual trade, sits at less than 22 per cent. It was 50 per cent when the scheme launched in 2017. The trend is, mathematically and morally, in the wrong direction.

Why? Because the Levy, as designed, is a tax on the largest employers, who are also the most administratively sophisticated employers, who are therefore the most likely to capture the spend back through their own internal training departments by relabelling existing programmes as “apprenticeships”. It is a near-textbook example of what regulators call “capture”: the institution being regulated has more lawyers than the regulator, so the regulation eventually serves the institution. KPMG’s graduates have not, on close inspection, become better trained than they were before the Levy. They have merely become, on paper, “apprentices”, which is now a word with as much real-world purchase as “synergy”.

Down at the bottom of the pyramid, where my Lincolnshire electrician sits, the picture is the inverse. Small firms get nothing meaningful out of the Levy because they don’t pay it. The “co-investment” route, in which a small firm pays 5 per cent of training costs and the government 95 per cent, is, on paper, generous, but the funding bands are too narrow for the trades that need them most. An electrical apprentice costs about £21,000 to train properly over three years. The funding band sits at £15,000. The shortfall lands on the SME, in addition to all the time spent supervising, teaching, marking, signing off and chasing assessment paperwork.

Then there is the assessment apparatus. We have, between us, built a national vocational training infrastructure of such breath-taking complexity that even the people running it cannot tell you, with confidence, the difference between a Level 3, a Level 4, a Level 4 with end-point assessment and a Level 4 with “gateway”. There are seven separate categories of approved provider; there are sixteen categories of assessment organisation; there are over 600 standards in current use. My Lincolnshire friend abandoned the attempt to take on his three apprentices in mid-November, when he was forwarded an email from his local college informing him that his preferred end-point assessor had had its registration paused “pending revalidation”. Which assessor was paused, and why? You guessed.

Reform is not, in fact, complicated. The Tony Blair Institute, of all bodies, set most of it out in a report last summer. Cap the share of Levy spend that can go on Level 6 or above at 20 per cent, with the balance ring-fenced for under-25s. Widen the funding bands for trades. Strip out the tiered-assessor pantomime and revert to a single, simple, employer-led qualification gate per trade. Restore a meaningful share of decision-making to local economic partnerships, which know who is hiring what.

None of this is foreign. We had something approximating this, broadly, between 1964 and 1981, under the Industrial Training Boards. We threw it away in the early Thatcher years on perfectly defensible ideological grounds, replaced it with nothing for two decades, then panicked back into the present hash. The most painful thing about the apprenticeship debate in Britain is the realisation that, every twenty years or so, we re-invent the same wheel and put it on a wonkier axle.

If Labour is serious, and the rebrand suggests, at the very least, that it would like to be, it has six months to land a real reform. The Lincolnshire electrician who would otherwise be doing useful national work training three teenagers is, frankly, watching. So am I.

Read more:
The Apprenticeship Levy is broken, and the ‘Growth and Skills’ rebrand won’t mend it

There is a particular look on a Chancellor’s face, in the closing minutes of a Spring Statement, that you only really see if you have watched a few.

It is the look of a person who has just got away with something. The eyes drift up; the shoulders drop; the back of the dispatch box gets a little lean-back; the well-rehearsed peroration about working people and stability and growth is delivered with the slightly distracted air of a person already rewinding for the live interviews on the College Green. We saw that look yesterday. It told you everything you needed to know.

Because here is what Rachel Reeves did not announce.

She did not announce a real cut to business rates for hospitality. She did not announce an end to the gradual erosion of inheritance tax relief on family business and farms, which has now been quietly tightened in three successive fiscal events under different titles. She did not announce a freeze on employer National Insurance, despite a year of pleading from every employers’ body in the country. She did not produce the long-promised reform of the apprenticeship levy. She did not, despite frantic pre-briefing about a “Cities of Growth” initiative, deliver anything to the medium-sized industrial heartland between Hull and Stoke that the country has been begging her to address.

She did do the following. She nudged the dividend allowance down, again, by a hundred pounds. She produced an additional bond issuance for the British Business Bank with a tag of £400 million, much of which will, on past form, end up subsidising tier-one consultancies operating as “delivery partners”. She extended Making Tax Digital to landlords below the £30,000 threshold, which will, by the OBR’s own number, raise £85 million while costing the affected SMEs about £350 million in compliance fees. She announced a new tax-incentivised vehicle for private-credit funds to invest in “regional infrastructure”, which, deciphered, means London and the South-East with a press release.

This was not a Spring Statement. It was an interest payment, in the currency of British political theatre, on a debt the Chancellor knows she will have to roll over again in the autumn. The “markets”, that great anonymous chorus before whom we all curtsey now, will give her a brief golf clap, gilts will hold steady, the Office for Budget Responsibility will publish a polite forecast, and the country will be back in this same chair in November.

What infuriates me, frankly, is the missed opportunity. The Chancellor had, in front of her, three measures any of which would have cost less than the Whitehall press operation already spends on her itinerary, and which would have changed the temperature of British business meaningfully. A single per-cent cut to employer NIC for firms below £10m turnover. A statutory commitment that no further changes to entrepreneurs’ relief or BPR would happen this Parliament. A 12.5 per cent VAT band for hospitality, paid for by removing the capital allowance on warehouse build-out. None of these things were taken. None of them were even seriously considered, on the evidence of the Treasury Red Book.

Why? Because Rachel Reeves, like every Chancellor who came before her, has discovered that the path of least resistance through any fiscal event is to find a fresh set of pockets in the upper-middle of the British economy and pat them down for change. Small landlords. Mid-sized employers. Family farms. Family pubs. The classic profile is unmistakeable: high enough to have something worth taking, fragmented enough not to organise, busy enough not to march. There are no rallies in Parliament Square for a £4,200 NIC bill. There ought to be.

I do not, before this column slips into pure complaint, suggest that the Chancellor’s constraints are imaginary. They are real. Borrowing costs are real. The bond markets are real. Demographics are real. Adult social care is real. Defence procurement is real, and large. I am not asking her to perform a magic trick. I am asking her to stop performing a different magic trick, the one where she pulls another £1.5 billion of revenue out of the SME hat each March without anyone noticing, and to begin actually framing fiscal policy around the question of how Britain produces the growth it requires.

Because if she carries on like this, the answer to that question becomes painfully simple. Britain doesn’t. It is produced for us, somewhere else, by economies which are, by accident of policy, more friendly to those who try to make things work.

We are not, I promise the Chancellor, an inexhaustible resource. There is a limit, even to British forbearance. Yesterday, in the gap between her sit-down and the Speaker’s standing-up, we got a glimpse of it.

Read more:
After the Spring Statement, Britain’s businesses know exactly what to expect: nothing

I write this on the eve of another Spring Statement and the great British SME, which is the part of the economy I happen to know, has the look of a man who has already been through Customs twice and is being asked to step into the side room.

There has been, somewhere along the way, a quiet consensus that this is not going to be the “fiscal event” the Treasury keeps insisting it is not. There has, equally quietly, been a consensus that, regardless of what they call it, we are going to be paying for it.

Let us take a moment, therefore, to lay out the road we already know we are on. Employer National Insurance contributions went up to 15 per cent in April last year. The threshold at which it kicked in fell to £5,000. The annual cost to the median ten-person SME, by our own modelling at Trends Research, runs to about £19,500. Business rates have been re-valued for 2026; the multiplier reform Labour promised in opposition has not, despite warm words, materialised. Capital gains tax has crept up. Inheritance tax on agricultural and business property has been narrowed. Pension contributions for higher earners have been clawed at. Energy subsidies for industrial users, which were the only thing keeping a third of British manufacturing on its feet in 2024, have been quietly withdrawn.

Against that backdrop, Rachel Reeves walks into the Commons next week with a set of fiscal headroom figures that have, in every Office for Budget Responsibility exercise this year, shrunk and not grown. She has, on present numbers, somewhere between £8 billion and £12 billion of room before her own self-imposed rule kicks in, and the gilt market, which, if we are being honest, is the only Whip in this Parliament with actual votes — is watching her pencil with intense suspicion.

The temptation, as ever, will be to find another revenue line. The Treasury, like all Treasuries, has a list of these as long as your arm. A small tweak to dividend taxation. Another fiddle on entrepreneur relief. A “temporary” levy on stamp duty for commercial property. A fresh sparkle of HMRC investigatory zeal aimed at the family-owned business and the self-employed. None of these moves will make headlines. All of them will, taken together, do meaningful damage.

What I would ask, if I had ninety seconds with the Chancellor and a strong cup of coffee, is this. First, no new taxes, at all, on the firms turning over below £10 million. We are the part of the economy that hires when others freeze. Tax is the wrong instrument for the wrong patient. Second, a serious rebalancing of business rates, with a full-fat hospitality and high-street multiplier cut paid for, in the medium term, by extending rates to the warehouse and logistics estate that has so far skated free. Third, a five-year freeze on tinkering with the EIS, the SEIS, and entrepreneurs’ relief, because what UK risk capital needs more than anything is the boring, unsexy gift of stability.

Fourth, and most importantly, Chancellor, if you really want to move a needle on growth, give me a serious skills package built around real apprenticeships and not the consultancy-flavoured “leadership levy” we currently endure. The British SME does not need another tax break. It needs a 19-year-old who can wire a junction box and turn up on time. The training infrastructure to deliver that died, slowly, between 1998 and 2018, and the country has been quietly paying for its absence ever since.

The grim Westminster smart money expects, instead, a “narrative event”. Another fiddle with the fuel duty escalator. Another £500m for some shop-window programme, ideally with a name that ends in -hub. Another speech about the “foundations of growth” which will be exhumed, like the foundations of an abandoned new town, by the next administration in due course.

I would love, on this particular Wednesday, to be wrong. I would love the Chancellor to walk out of Number 11 with a serious, unflashy, business-friendly Statement that puts a stable hand on the tiller and makes the first long-overdue gesture of trust in the firms that actually employ people in this country. There is a version of Rachel Reeves who could do that, and I would, in this column, be the first to say so.

But the begging bowl, on present trajectory, is already on the move. The British SME has heard the front door open. We are bracing. And, increasingly, we are looking at the back of the timetable for the late train to Lisbon.

Read more:
Reeves’s Spring Statement: brace yourselves, the begging bowl is on its way round again

It is International Women’s Day, and my LinkedIn feed has the look of a small market town in Provence: lavender, pastel, and a great deal of self-congratulation.

There are sponsored breakfasts. There are sponsored panels. There are sponsored lanyards. And tomorrow, when the bunting comes down, we will go back to a country in which female-founded UK companies receive, depending on whose research you trust, somewhere between 1 and 3 per cent of all venture capital deployed.

I have, in the kindest possible way, had enough.

I do not, before any of the obvious counter-thrusts, doubt that the panels are well-meant. I know many of the women on them, and most of the men. I have spoken on a few of them myself, including one breakfast in 2019 which was so corporately catered that the smoked salmon was on a kind of pastel-pink mousse, and which produced, as far as I can establish, no detectable change in any UK funding statistic.

The problem is not that we are talking about female entrepreneurship. The problem is that we have managed to construct a thriving industry, events, books, breakfast sessions, Instagram accounts, chief diversity officers, podcasts, which exists primarily to discuss the fact that women do not get capital, while doing nothing in particular to change the fact that women do not get capital. The discussion has become the policy. And the policy, by every measure available to me, is failing.

Consider the figures. Of UK venture capital deployed in 2025, around 1.8 per cent went to all-female-founded teams. About 8 per cent went to mixed teams. The rest went to all-male teams. This is consistent with 2024, with 2023, with 2022, and indeed with most of the years going back to the founding of the British Venture Capital Association. None of the stickered Pride-of-Britain campaigns and IWD campaigns and 30%-Club campaigns have moved this number meaningfully in a decade.

Why? Because the cheque book is not on a panel. The cheque book sits in 22 firms, mostly within an Underground stop of Old Street, almost exclusively staffed by men in their thirties and forties, who, like all human beings, write cheques most easily for people who remind them of themselves. This is not, before anyone reaches for their lawyer, an accusation of malice. It is an observation about pattern recognition, which is what venture capital is. And until the people doing the pattern recognition look different, the patterns recognised will look the same.

What would actually move the dial, then, beyond the lanyards? First: get the British Business Bank, which is the largest single investor in UK venture capital, to write into its limited partner agreements a hard requirement on capital deployed to female-led teams, with a real reporting and clawback mechanism. The Bank already screens for ESG. It can screen for this. Second: widen the EIS scheme to give a higher relief rate, say 35 per cent rather than 30, for investments into female-led companies. Money moves; pre-seed capital follows tax incentives like a Labrador follows ham.

Third, and this is the one nobody in this debate ever wants to talk about, recognise that a meaningful share of the gender capital gap is in fact a maternity capital gap. Female founders raise less because, on the evidence, they are penalised for the years 30 to 40 in a way their male counterparts are not. A statutory founder maternity allowance, paid out of a small levy on EIS, would do more for female enterprise than ten years of pancake breakfasts. It would also, by the way, be cheap. We could fund it from the Treasury’s underspend on the dormant assets scheme alone.

I write all this not as a heroic ally, heroes are exhausting, but as a serial investor who has watched too many gifted women take their cap table abroad because the British funding stack made them feel like a marketing exercise rather than a portfolio company. We will not fix this with another lavender panel. We will fix it with cheques.

Happy International Women’s Day. Now: who in this room is signing one?

Read more:
International Women’s Day: spare us the lanyards and look at who’s actually got the cheque book

I was in a pub in Marylebone last Wednesday, a perfectly civilised, low-ceilinged, slightly damp London pub of the kind that ought to be impossible to ruin, and I watched a couple in their late thirties order, in entirely sober earnestness, two mocktails and a small bowl of edamame.

The man asked, with a straight face, whether the lime cordial was “refined sugar free”. The barman, a Pole called Marek who is approximately my age and certainly more dignified, did the thing with his eyes that hospitality professionals do when they are deciding whether to keep the lease or burn the place down. Marek, if you’re reading: I voted burn.

We have arrived, as a culture, at the apparent consensus that drinking less is uncomplicatedly good. I am not, despite the byline, going to argue otherwise. I have lived, all my life, in a country with a complicated relationship to alcohol, and the evidence on liver disease, on domestic harm, on the working week, is what it is. Drink less, by all means. Drink better, even better. But would somebody, please, sit down with the Treasury, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Centre for Social Justice, and explain to them that the British pub, the actual building, the actual job, the actual community, has been the quiet collateral damage of this turn, and that this matters?

The numbers tell the story. Trade in our hospitality clients drops by close to 18 per cent during Dry January. It drops again by another 7 to 9 per cent in Lent, in Lent, in 2026, in a country where most people couldn’t name three of the Apostles. Sober October, in slightly tongue-in-cheek alliance with Stoptober, dings the year by another four. Add in the steady ambient drift towards low-and-no, and the modern publican is running a business in which one in every four months is structurally worse than the same month a decade ago.

I am, again, not blaming the trend. I am asking what we propose to do about the building.

Because here is the thing about the British pub: it is not a vehicle for selling drinks. It is, despite our refusal to acknowledge it, the principal piece of social infrastructure in much of the country. There are 8,000 villages in England and Wales without a shop. There are 4,000 villages without a primary school. There are still, for now, 22,000 with a pub. The pub is where Cubs AGMs happen, where wakes are organised, where young men whose mothers are worrying about them sit on a Sunday afternoon in chair facing the door. It is a building Britain has, almost by accident, decided also to use as a bar.

Treat it as infrastructure and the policy debate changes. We don’t ask Network Rail to fund itself entirely from ticket sales. We don’t ask GP surgeries to break even on prescriptions. We accept, in the case of railways and clinics, that there is a public-good element to the institution beyond what its private business model can capture. The pub has the same character. It deserves the same imagination.

Concretely: a hospitality VAT cut to 12.5 per cent, which would funnel almost directly to the food side of the wet-led pub. A community-pub multiplier on business rates that recognises a difference between a rural free house and a Premier Inn carvery. A statutory presumption against “asset of community value” pub conversions to flats, with the burden of proof reversed, on the developer. And, while we are at it, a serious conversation about the alcohol duty escalator, which, in its present form, is taxing the pint at a rate that nudges yet another drinker towards the supermarket.

The wellness lobby, who I have learned not to take on lightly, will tell me that lower drinking is straightforwardly good and that the death of the pub is a price worth paying. The doctors’ groups will be in the same camp. I would gently observe that the same argument was used for the closure of the cinemas in the 1960s, the bingo halls in the 1980s and the high streets in the 2010s. We are slow learners, in this country, about what we lose when we lose the rooms.

Sober October is a fine campaign. Dry January is healthy and worthy. Lent is, I gather, theologically defensible. None of these things should sit at the foot of a long-term public policy that hollows out the actual building. The mocktail is not the future of British community life. The mocktail is, on the present trajectory, what comes between us and it.

And yes, I bought Marek a drink. He wouldn’t have one. He’s on day eleven.

Read more:
Lent, Dry January, Sober October: when did the British pub become collateral damage in the wellness wars?

When the Government’s entrepreneurship adviser, Alex Depledge, declared that Britain does not “need any more restaurants”, I’ll confess my first reaction was disbelief. My second was to reach for the data. And my third, after reading it, was a conclusion both simple and troubling: she has misidentified where entrepreneurship in this country actually lives and in doing so, is making it harder for it to survive.

Let me start with the basics. Hospitality employs 2.6 million people in the UK, 7.1% of the entire workforce. It generates £69.5 billion in gross value added. It contributes £54 billion in gross tax receipts annually. It is, by any reasonable measure, not a peripheral cottage industry but a cornerstone of the British economy. But here is the figure that should stop the Government’s entrepreneurship adviser in her tracks, one drawn from the House of Commons Library research briefing on hospitality, published in January 2026, which she may not yet have had the opportunity to read: 99.6% of hospitality businesses are SMEs, and 97.7% are small businesses. An adviser appointed to clear the path for more small enterprises might reasonably be expected to know that one of the most entrepreneurially dense sectors in the entire UK economy is the one she has just publicly dismissed.

But the argument I want to make goes beyond the statistics, important as they are. It goes to something more fundamental, something that Depledge, for all her intelligence and commercial experience, appears to have overlooked entirely.

Every business deal that gets done in this country, every investment secured, every partnership formed, every client relationship built, happens somewhere and through human contact. It happens over a coffee, over lunch, over dinner, at a networking event, at a conference, at a drinks reception. The hospitality sector is not separate from the high-growth economy that the Government’s adviser wants to build. It is the connective tissue of it. You cannot scale a clean tech company, close a venture capital round, or sign a manufacturing partnership without, at some point, sitting across a table from someone in a room that a hospitality business has made possible.

I want to give a concrete example of what smart support for hospitality entrepreneurship actually looks like, because it is already happening, just not by government. On our own university campus, we work with Aramark to provide catering for students, staff and events. Given the natural variation in demand across term time, Aramark does something rather clever: it brings in small, independent food truck operators on a rotating basis, giving them seven or eight hours a day of guaranteed footfall, exposure to a large and diverse customer base, and the kind of commercial experience that no business incubator programme can replicate. The result is a richer, more varied food offering for our community, and a genuine launchpad for small hospitality enterprises.

Pubs are doing the same. The Compton Arms in Islington, ranked in the UK’s Top 50 Gastropubs, has built its reputation on offering kitchen residencies to emerging independent food businesses, giving them a platform, a customer base, and the commercial experience to grow. It is not a charity model; it is a smart one. The chefs behind Four Legs did their residency at the Compton Arms and went on to open The Plimsoll. Walk into any good pub offering food, and you will find a similar story, Thai kitchens operating out of the back, independent suppliers stocking the bar, local producers on the menu. These are ecosystems of entrepreneurship that the Government’s own adviser appears not to have noticed.

Aramark and the Compton Arms have understood something that the Government has not: supporting small hospitality businesses is not charity. It is smart commercial strategy.

I would gently invite the Government’s entrepreneurship adviser to conduct a simple experiment. Consider a single working day. The morning coffee picked up on the way to the office supplied by an independent café, almost certainly an SME. The biscuits and drinks laid on for the first meeting of the day. Lunch, whether grabbed at a local restaurant or catered in. Networking event with colleagues or clients. A family dinner that evening. Count how many of those touchpoints involve a hospitality business. Count how many of the people who made those moments possible are employed in a sector she has suggested we do not need more of.

The Government says it wants to champion the industries of tomorrow. So do we. There is no disagreement about the importance of clean technology, advanced manufacturing, or the creative sector. But the framing of hospitality as somehow standing in the way of that ambition is a false choice and a damaging one. An economy that neglects its sixth largest employment sector, that has already seen restaurants shed 22% of their casual dining sites since 2020, and that continues to pile on costs through National Insurance increases and business rates reform, is not building for the future. It is hollowing out the present.

Britain’s hospitality sector does not need to be told it isn’t wanted. It needs a government and an entrepreneurship adviser that understands what it is and what it does well enough to support it properly.

Read more:
The Government’s entrepreneurship adviser says we don’t need more restaurants. She’s wrong and here’s why

In many organisations, portfolio is still viewed as a list of products and services – something to be expanded in the hope that more choice will unlock more opportunity. In reality, sustainable growth rarely comes from volume alone.

For high-performing businesses, a strategic portfolio is one that is deliberately designed around customer outcomes. It supports acquisition, strengthens retention and creates long-term value through clarity, consistency and service excellence.

In this blog I will be exploring how a focused, service-led portfolio can drive sustainable growth. Drawing on Chubb’s approach to connected services, cross-selling and long-term customer relationships, he explains why portfolio discipline is a critical leadership lever in today’s complex and regulated markets.

Portfolio as a Growth Strategy, Not a Catalogue

Across many sectors, portfolios grow reactively – shaped by short-term sales opportunities or competitor activity. Over time, this can create fragmented offerings that are difficult for customers to navigate and challenging for teams to deliver consistently.

In fire safety and security, where trust, reliability and compliance are paramount, this approach simply doesn’t work. Customers aren’t looking for disconnected products; they’re looking for partners who can manage risk holistically.

A strategic portfolio is therefore not about selling more things. It’s about offering the right combination of services, delivered in a way that supports both immediate needs and long-term resilience.

Portfolio as One of Chubb’s Three Ps

At Chubb, Portfolio sits alongside People and Process as one of our three strategic pillars, and it plays a central role in driving top-line growth.

Our portfolio strategy is built around:

• Service and monitoring-led propositions
• Multi-discipline contracts that simplify supplier management for customers
• Connected services that provide insight, responsiveness and peace of mind

By leading with service, we create opportunities to capture greater share of customer spend while delivering more integrated, value-driven solutions. This approach supports both customer acquisition and retention – helping us build long-term relationships rather than transactional engagements.

However, implementing portfolio discipline is not without challenges. Internal resistance to change, legacy systems and market pressures can all pose obstacles. At Chubb, we address these by fostering a culture of continuous improvement, investing in staff training, and modernising our technology to support agile decision-making.

Connected Services and Cross-Selling with Purpose

Cross-selling is often misunderstood as simply adding more products to an account. At Chubb, it’s about identifying where additional services genuinely enhance protection, performance and compliance.

Connected services play a critical role here. By leveraging data, monitoring and integrated technologies, we’re able to:

• Anticipate customer needs
• Improve response and reliability
• Strengthen ongoing engagement through service excellence

This creates natural opportunities to expand relationships in a way that feels relevant and valuable to customers – not forced or opportunistic. For example, one of our long-term customers faced evolving compliance requirements. By proactively offering a bundled solution that combined fire safety audits with ongoing monitoring, we not only met their immediate needs but also deepened our relationship and opened the door to additional services.

Retention Is Where Sustainable Growth Lives

While acquisition is important, long-term growth depends on retention. A well-curated portfolio makes it easier to retain customers by delivering consistent service, reducing complexity and reinforcing trust over time.

Multi-discipline contracts supported by connected services help customers see Chubb as a long-term partner, not a collection of suppliers. That loyalty is built through reliability, insight and the confidence that we’re continuously investing in their safety and resilience.

Lessons for Business Leaders

Business leaders should regularly review their portfolios, ensuring that each service or product contributes to sustainable growth. This means being willing to make tough decisions – retiring offerings that no longer serve the company or its customers and investing in those that do.

For leaders looking to refine their portfolios, consider these actionable steps:

• Conduct regular portfolio reviews with cross-functional teams
• Use customer feedback and data analytics to guide decisions
• Develop a checklist to assess each offering’s alignment with strategic goals.

Portfolio with Purpose

At Chubb, we see portfolio as a growth engine – one powered by service excellence, commercial discipline and customer insight.

By focusing on connected services, cross-selling with intent and long-term retention, we’re building sustainable growth that benefits our customers, our people and our business.

Because when your portfolio is designed around customer outcomes, sustainable growth follows naturally – built on trust, clarity and long-term value.

Read more:
Building Sustainable Growth Through a Strategic Portfolio

I had a coffee last week with a woman who runs a small specialist engineering firm in the Black Country. She has 14 staff, an order book that runs into the autumn, and a fridge full of unpaid invoices from a household-name aerospace contractor.

The total, when she totted it up on the back of a Pret napkin, came to £197,000. None of it overdue by a few days. All of it overdue by between 60 and 110 days, against contracted 30. She had already, that morning, told two suppliers she would have to pay them later than agreed. The cascade has a name: it is called late payment, and it is the slow-motion mugging of British small business.

We have been talking about this for as long as I can remember writing about business in this country. Every government in turn produces a Prompt Payment Code, a Small Business Commissioner, an Annual Report on Payment Practices, and an op-ed by a minister congratulating themselves on having done something. And every year I sit down with another version of the same engineer, with the same fridge, and the same napkin. Nothing changes.

It does not change because the incentives, as ever, do not change. A FTSE buyer has every reason in the world to push its payable days out, and almost no reason at all to bring them in. Their finance director gets a bonus for working capital. Their procurement team gets a sticker for “supplier consolidation”. The small firm at the other end of the contract, meanwhile, gets a dunning email from HMRC about its VAT liability, regardless of whether the cash has actually arrived.

I have been an evangelist for the Prompt Payment Code, since it was discussed when I had the ear, of the then, Prime Minister David Cameron, but let’s be honest: it has the legal force of a strongly worded letter from your tennis club. Suspension is an embarrassment, not a sanction. A FTSE 250 board does not lose sleep over its prompt-payment ranking the way it does about, say, an SEC filing. Until late payment becomes a board-level personal exposure for company directors, the practice will continue, because the practice is profitable.

So make it personal. The single reform I would put in front of the Chancellor, and I will, should I ever meet Rachel Reeves, is statutory interest at the Bank Rate plus four, accruing automatically, with directors of large companies personally liable for any payable overdue by more than 60 days twice in any 12 months. Not the company. The directors. Watch your payable days improve in a week.

I would also, while we are at it, force every company over £100m of turnover to publish a real-time live dashboard of average days to pay, with the contracted rate, the actual rate, and the names of the buyers responsible. Not an annual PDF buried at the bottom of an investor relations page. A living, breathing public number, refreshed nightly, like a football score. There is nothing a procurement director hates more than visibility.

There will be the usual howling from the British Chambers of Commerce-via-CFO lobby, saying that all this will simply push pricing onto small suppliers, raising costs for buyers and consumers. To which the answer is: yes, marginally, and that is correct. Britain has under-priced its small suppliers for two decades by allowing big buyers to use them as an unsecured credit line. Re-pricing late payment is the correction, not the problem.

And the macro effect, if anyone is still listening over the noise of another City lunch, is enormous. Federation of Small Business estimates suggest late payment kills around 50,000 UK firms a year. Fifty thousand. That is more than were killed during the worst of the pandemic. Every single one of those firms had jobs, taxes paid, customers served, premises rented and apprenticeships started. We talk endlessly about a missing tier of mid-market British companies; here, in late payment, is one of the biggest single reasons we don’t have one.

Back in my Black Country engineer’s fridge, the £197,000 will, eventually, arrive. It will arrive on day 117, because a supplier-finance scheme has been waved at her by a polite man from a London bank, charging her three per cent of the face value to settle early on her own invoice. So the contractor pays late, the bank takes a clip, and she takes the haircut. That is, in a sentence, the British small-business economy in 2026.

Late payment is a quiet pandemic. The next Chancellor’s budget could end it in an afternoon. I am no longer holding my breath; but I am, very loudly, holding the napkin.

Read more:
Late payment is Britain’s quiet pandemic, and SMEs are still being told to take it on the chin

There is a particular kind of Friday-afternoon dread reserved for British company directors in 2026, and it goes like this. You sit down to do something blameless, file a confirmation statement, add your new finance director, change the registered address, and Companies House, in its infinite wisdom, asks you to “verify your identity”.

Forty-five minutes later you have uploaded a passport, a driving licence, a recent utility bill and a selfie that looks suspiciously like a hostage proof-of-life, only to be told, at the end of it, that the system “could not match” your face to your photograph and to “try again later”.

Try again later! This is not the DVLA renewing a moped licence. This is the central registry of the world’s fifth-largest economy.

I have lost count of the SMEs I know that are now several months behind on perfectly innocuous filings simply because some founder, usually one with two passports, a name with a hyphen or an unfortunate haircut in 2014, cannot get past the verification gate. The Treasury and the Department for Business will tell you that this is the price we pay for a cleaner register, and that the previous regime allowed shell companies to be set up by anyone with a laptop and a sense of humour. They are right about that. They are wrong about almost everything they have done in response.

Identity verification at Companies House should have been the opposite of what we have got. It should have been near-frictionless for the 99 per cent of directors whose passport, address and bank account already exist as a matched set somewhere in HMRC’s files, and forensic for the 1 per cent who present anomalies. Instead we got the photocopier-shop equivalent of a Soviet checkpoint, designed by a committee that has clearly never tried to use it on a phone in poor light with a teething toddler on its lap.

I am not, I should say, soft on company fraud. The phoenixing brigade, limited company, limited liability, limited shame, have done genuine damage to British creditors for decades, and the appearance of registered addresses at the back of a fried-chicken shop in Croydon was overdue for a tidy. But the fraudsters know what they are doing. They have hired the agents. They have the documents. They are not the ones quietly going non-compliant in Cheltenham because Mum’s passport doesn’t scan in evening light.

The wider issue is that Companies House has become symptomatic. Every time the UK state encounters a problem of trust, its instinct is now to push the cost of solving it down to the smallest economic units in the country. HMRC does this with Making Tax Digital. The Home Office does it with right-to-work checks. The pension regulator does it with auto-enrolment. The collective effect, on a small business, is that you spend an ever larger slice of your week being a junior compliance officer for somebody else’s policy ambitions.

And the cost is not trivial. Our own back-of-the-envelope estimate at Trends Research is that the average UK SME now spends 14 hours a week, fourteen, on regulatory administration that produces no output, no customer satisfaction, no employee training. A team of ten loses a person and a half. That is, mathematically, why productivity in this country has flat-lined.

What would I do? First, build a proper digital identity rail in this country, so that the same verification works for HMRC, Companies House, the DVLA and your bank. The Estonians did this in 2002. Second, presume innocence: most directors are who they say they are, and the system should treat them that way until something looks off. Third, give Companies House actual investigatory powers, and the staff to use them, to chase the genuine fraudsters, rather than penalising the easy targets who are already on the register.

I would also, while I am at it, suggest that the people who design these processes be required to use them. Spend a Saturday morning trying to verify your own identity on a six-year-old Android while supervising a teenager’s GCSE coursework. You will, I promise, redesign the form by Sunday lunchtime.

Until then, my own confirmation statement sits unsigned, my finance director is locked out of his own filings, and the country goes on talking about a productivity puzzle that is not, in fact, very puzzling at all.

Read more:
Companies House has turned every UK director into a passport-juggling pen-pusher

The Employment Rights Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025, and the Act will be implemented on a phased basis, through to 2027.

There are, however, two specific implementation dates to be aware of this year: 6 April 2026 and 1 October 2026.

April 2026

Paternity leave and Parental leave

From 6 April, there will be a day-one right to paternity leave and parental leave. The current requirement for 26 weeks’ and one year’s service, respectively, will be removed. It will also be possible to take paternity leave after shared parental leave.

Also from the same date, there will be a new right to bereaved partner’s paternity leave of up to 52 weeks. This is for fathers and partners who lose their partner before their child’s first birthday. It resolves the difficulties of bereaved partners, without the relevant length of service for time off, who have to rely on discretionary compassionate leave from their employer.

Statutory sick pay

From 6 April, employees will receive SSP from day one of sickness absence, removing the current three-day waiting period. The lower earnings limit will also be abolished, and SSP will be £123.25 a week or 80% of normal weekly earnings, whichever is lower.

Whistleblowing

The definition of a “qualifying disclosure” for whistleblowing purposes will be extended from 6 April to include disclosures about sexual harassment.

Collective redundancy protective award

From 6 April, the maximum protective award for failure to collectively consult will double from 90 days’ to 180 days’ pay. This significant increase is intended to prevent employers from “pricing in” the cost of ignoring collective consultation obligations.

Fair Work Agency (FWA)

The FWA will be established on 6 April. It will be able to conduct workplace inspections, issue penalties for underpayment of wages, and represent workers in legal proceedings. We do not have the timeline for the FWA’s enforcement powers; we only have its launch date.

Other developments

It is worth mentioning that there will be extensive trade union and industrial action changes throughout the year. Also, employers with 250 or more employees are expected to introduce voluntary equality action plans in April to promote gender equality, address the gender pay gap, and support menopausal employees. The plans will be mandatory in 2027.

October 2026

Harassment and sexual harassment

Currently, employers must take “reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment in the course of employment. From 1 October, the duty will be strengthened to take “all reasonable steps”.

There will also be protection from third-party harassment, covering any harassment rather than only sexual harassment as at present. Third parties include customers, clients and members of the public. Employers will be liable unless they can show they have taken all reasonable steps to prevent third-party harassment.

Fire and rehire

From 1 October, dismissing an employee for refusing certain contract changes (“restricted variations”) will be automatically unfair, except where the employer is in financial difficulty. Restricted variations include changes to pay, pensions, working hours, shift patterns or holiday entitlement.

It will also constitute an automatic unfair dismissal if an employee is replaced with someone who is not a direct employee (for example, an agency worker) and who will perform the same or substantially the same role as the dismissed employee.

Employment Tribunal time limits

From 1 October, the time limit for bringing an Employment Tribunal claim will increase to six months for all claims, doubling the current limit of three months. There is concern that this may lead to a rise in Employment Tribunal cases, but it also arguably provides more time for early conciliation.

Other developments

As well as changes to trade union and industrial action, amendments scheduled for implementation on 1 October will prevent the creation of a “two-tier workforce” under outsourced contracts. From the same date, employers must consult with workers and trade union representatives on their written tips policy and review it at least once every three years.

How can employers prepare for implementation?

• Review and update family-related and sickness absence policies, and communicate with staff about the reasons for the changes and when they will take effect.

Be mindful of the considerable increase in the protective award for failing to collectively consult if redundancies are anticipated.

• Prepare for higher SSP costs.
• Review and update whistleblowing policies and reporting mechanisms to cover sexual harassment disclosures and provide clear guidance for staff.
• Review and update harassment and sexual harassment policies, and review any sexual harassment risk assessment to account for the extended duty.
• Prepare for greater scrutiny of employment practices when the FWA’s remit becomes clearer.
• Consider whether additional training is needed for staff and managers.

This year, more than ever, employers need to stay informed and to prepare for the many employment law changes ahead.

Read more:
Implementation of the Employment Rights Act 2025: what employers need to know

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) are often seen as “big company” issues – tied to boardroom pledges, large HR teams or investor reporting. But the reality is quite different. For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), building a more inclusive culture is not just possible; it’s essential for sustainable growth.

At Chubb Fire & Security UK&I, diversity, equity and inclusion are embedded into the way we work. One of our core values is to “Win with integrity, together” – and that means creating a workplace where every individual feels respected, included and able to thrive. We don’t see DE&I as an initiative. We see it as a leadership standard.

And while large organisations may have dedicated resources for this work, smaller businesses have a unique advantage: they can make change happen faster, with closer teams and more direct influence from leadership.

Why DE&I Belongs in Every Business Strategy

In the UK, the legal case for inclusive workplaces is clear. Under the Equality Act 2010, businesses must ensure that people are not discriminated against based on protected characteristics, including race, gender, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation and more.

But DE&I is not just a legal requirement. It’s a competitive advantage.

Research shows that diverse teams are better at problem-solving, more innovative and more adaptable in times of change. Inclusive cultures encourage trust and psychological safety – two factors that directly support retention, productivity and performance.

At Chubb, we recognise that diversity, equity and inclusion are strong drivers of growth and innovation. We’ve seen how teams thrive when people feel safe to be themselves, share their perspectives and contribute without fear of judgement. It’s not about meeting quotas; it’s about unlocking potential.

Chubb’s Commitment: Creating a Culture Where Everyone Belongs

We take pride in marking cultural and awareness moments that matter to our people – from Pride and Eid to Baby Loss Awareness Week and National Inclusion Week. These moments help us build empathy, strengthen relationships and create space for conversation.

We also take care to reflect DE&I in how we lead. As our Chief Operations Officer, David Dunnagan, puts it:

“DE&I goes much further than just employing diverse people; it’s about creating an inclusive and equitable environment in which every employee feels valued and respected.”

That environment is shaped not only by formal policies, but by the everyday behaviours of leaders and colleagues. From how we run meetings to how we hire, promote and communicate, we aim to model fairness, transparency and respect.

We know that when people feel safe and seen, they perform better. They grow faster. And they stay longer.

A Practical Roadmap for SME Leaders

You don’t need a dedicated DE&I officer to make meaningful progress. Here are five actions any SME can take – starting today:

1. Start with Listening and Learning

Hold informal conversations, run anonymous surveys or simply ask your team: “What does inclusion mean to you?” You don’t need to have all the answers. Showing a willingness to listen and learn is the first step to building trust.

2. Build Inclusion into Everyday Culture

Create inclusive meeting habits to make sure everyone is heard. Avoid scheduling around cultural holidays to encourage diverse perspectives. Inclusive cultures aren’t created by policy – they’re created by people, every day.

3. Check Your Processes for Fairness

Look at how you hire, promote and recognise talent. Are your job ads inclusive? Are opportunities visible and accessible to all? Small changes, like removing biased language from a job post, can have a big impact.

4. Celebrate What Makes People Different

Recognise cultural celebrations, awareness days and life events. Invite your team to share stories or lead activities. These moments foster connection, compassion and belonging.

5. Lead by Example

Inclusion starts at the top. Leaders must model openness, fairness and humility. At Chubb, we empower our people to be their true selves – and expect leaders to create the conditions that make that possible.

Inclusion Supports Growth and Keeps People

An inclusive culture doesn’t just attract talent – it keeps it. People stay where they feel valued. They speak up where they feel heard. And they do their best work where they feel safe.

In fast-moving businesses, especially SMEs, that stability matters. It means fewer recruitment costs, stronger collaboration and more continuity for customers and clients.

As our People Playbook puts it: “We celebrate the fact that our diversity makes us strong – and, simply, it’s the right thing to do.”

The Bottom Line

Diversity, equity and inclusion aren’t nice-to-haves. They’re must-haves for any business that wants to grow with integrity.

For SMEs, the opportunity is clear. You’re already close to your teams. You know your people. You move quickly. That means you can act – now – to create a more inclusive workplace where everyone feels they belong.

At Chubb, we’ve seen how inclusion strengthens our teams, our culture and our performance. We’ve still got work to do – but we’re proud of the journey we’re on.

Because when people feel safe to be themselves, they go further. And when they go further, so does your business.

Read more:
How SMEs can build diversity, equity and inclusion into their growth plans

I’ve been fortunate enough to walk the cavernous halls of a fair few of the world’s biggest trade shows in Las Vegas, they promised, and delivered, staggering innovation and energy.

Days of relentless discovery: robots pouring cappuccinos, AI so intuitive it seemed clairvoyant, and founders who spoke about change not as a cliché but as a lived reality. These were not just exhibitions; they were global marketplaces for ideas, capital and partnerships.

Yet back home, while Britain idles in Westminster’s fog of distracted policymaking, our competitors across Europe are not just showing up, they’re outshining us.

This year, Gary Shapiro, chief executive of the Consumer Technology Association, the people behind CES, the annual technology conference held this week annually in Vegas, publicly criticised the UK government for lacking meaningful support for British businesses at the world’s most influential tech stage. His indictment is stark: the UK’s presence at the event is “spotty” and underwhelming compared with countries such as France and the Netherlands. Meanwhile, those nations send senior ministers, in some cases even royalty, and generously fund coordinated national pavilions for their firms.

Before we mince words about patriotism and global ambition, let’s be clear: this isn’t some petty squabble over flags and PR stunts. Trade shows like CES are strategic platforms where deals are forged, investment flows are unlocked, and international credibility is forged. It is precisely where the future gets bought, sold and broadcast.

And yet, Britain, despite having one of the world’s most dynamic tech sectors, is looking increasingly like an afterthought.

Consider the facts: French exhibitors now outnumber British ones; Germany and the Netherlands field strong contingents; even some smaller European states pack more visible, government-backed stands. The UK’s Tradeshow Access Programme, once a modest but valuable grant scheme for SMEs, was scrapped in 2021 and, despite repeated pleas from industry, has not been restored.

I have witnessed first-hand the pride and purpose with which other nations approach these events. The French pavilion, sleek, well funded and staffed with government representatives, felt like a declaration of strategic intent. British exhibitors, by contrast, often seemed to be fending for themselves, clutching their pitch decks and hoping for serendipity rather than being buoyed by a coordinated national effort.

There’s something faintly absurd about this situation. Post-Brexit, our leaders have consistently proclaimed a desire to “go global”, to boost exports, attract investment, and elevate the UK’s role on the world stage. Yet when the most visible arena for that ambition rolls into Las Vegas, one where 100,000 visitors convene and thousands of international companies exhibit emerging technologies, we treat it as an optional extra rather than a priority.

True, the government points to its Industrial Strategy and Small Business Plan as evidence of support for scaling firms globally. But warm words on paper are cold comfort on the exhibition floor. In contrast, targeted financial support and senior government engagement send a clear signal that Britain not only values innovation, but backs it when the stakes are highest.

You need only speak to the founders who travelled thousands of miles from the UK, many self-funding their trips, to hear a consistent refrain: without coordinated help, British firms are underexposed and under-networked. One CEO told me he felt “overshadowed” by a neighbouring European country’s pavilion that looked and felt like a national investment. Another confessed that, had it not been for private backing, they might not have made the trip at all.

This should trouble us. The future of British business growth is not solely in domestic policy tinkering, it is in international trade, collaboration and visibility. Trade shows are not merely exhibitions; they are signposts for global relevance. When your government isn’t present in a meaningful way, the world notices — and so do investors, partners and international customers.

Let’s not construe this as an attack on civil servants or ministers. The truth is simpler: the UK is juggling competing priorities, cost of living, health services, geopolitics, and a multi-billion trade show in Nevada can seem indulgent by comparison. But that is precisely the point. Innovation and global business growth cannot be an afterthought if we are to compete with economies that deliberately align industrial strategy with outward-facing support.

Last year I was talking to a French startup founder, and I asked what her government’s presence meant to her, she smiled and said: “It means someone believes in our success before we prove it.” That sort of confidence matters. It turns heads, opens doors and scales businesses in ways that a sterling-denominated press release never will.

Britain has all the ingredients to be a leader: world-class universities with their numerous spin-offs, inventive entrepreneurs, and a time zone that bridges East and West. But without visible, tactical governmental support at flagship global events, we risk these assets being underestimated or, worse, overlooked.

If the UK truly aspires to be a global tech and trade powerhouse, then it must treat trade shows like CES as what they are: frontline diplomatic and economic missions.
Because if we aren’t prepared to support our businesses on the world’s biggest stages, we shouldn’t be surprised when others step into the spotlight, and we’re left in the auditorium seats, polite but absent.

Read more:
Why Britain’s world stage presence deserves more than lip service

There’s a particular sound that stays with you once you’ve lived in the English countryside. Not birdsong, that’s too obvious, but the deeper rhythm of things: the tractor coughing into life at dawn, Chameau boots crunching on gravel, the hooves of the horses going out for a hack, the soft murmur of a village pub where everyone knows exactly why you’re there even if they’ve never seen you before.

I had a house in rural Northamptonshire once. Not a fantasy “weekend retreat”, but a place where life actually happened. One evening, over a pint of ‘landlord’ and slightly judgemental, the village gamekeeper offered to teach me how to shoot. “You get good enough,” he said, “and maybe you can join us on a day at the estate.”

A few sessions at the clays with a beautiful Purdey side-by-side and I was hooked, not just on hitting the target – which I am told my hit rate was very impressive – but on the world around it. The quiet discipline. The sense of responsibility. The unspoken understanding that this was not about bloodlust or bravado, but stewardship. About knowing the land, respecting it, and earning your place within it.

Which is why, as 2025 limps to a close, I find myself deeply uneasy about the future of Britain’s rural economy, and the way of life bound up in it.

We’ve been told, repeatedly, that concerns about farming, shooting, gamekeeping and rural business are either nostalgic indulgences or political dog whistles. Watch a few episodes of Clarkson’s Farm and tell me that again with a straight face. Strip away the jokes and celebrity sheen and what you’re left with is a documentary about a sector living permanently on the brink,  one failed harvest, one policy tweak, one cost spike away from collapse.

That brinkmanship became painfully clear this year when the government set its sights on agricultural inheritance tax relief. What began as a plan to end long-standing protections for family farms triggered outrage across rural Britain. As reported by the Financial Times, the subsequent retreat, raising thresholds and softening the blow, was presented as a compromise. But uncertainty, once introduced, doesn’t politely leave again. It lingers. It freezes investment. It accelerates exits.

Family farms are not tax shelters. They are capital-intensive, low-margin, generational businesses whose value is tied up in land rather than liquidity. Treating them like dormant wealth piles rather than working enterprises is how you dismantle a sector quietly, without ever admitting you meant to.

And it’s not just farmers feeling the squeeze. Gamekeeping, shooting and countryside management support tens of thousands of jobs and underpin rural tourism, hospitality and supply chains. A stark warning was sounded recently in The Telegraph’s analysis of the decline of gamekeeping, which laid bare how rising costs, regulation and political hostility are pushing skilled rural workers out altogether.

This isn’t culture war fluff. It’s economics.

Add to that the sense, increasingly hard to shake, that rural Britain is culturally misunderstood by those writing policy. Labour’s proposals around animal welfare and trail hunting have reignited fears that legislation is being shaped through an urban moral lens, with The Guardian reporting warnings from countryside groups that rural voices are being marginalised rather than engaged.

Meanwhile, the data tells its own grim story. Farm closures continue to outpace new starts, with thousands of holdings disappearing under the weight of rising costs, labour shortages and unpredictable returns, as highlighted by FarmingUK. When a farm goes, it rarely goes alone. The contractor loses work. The feed supplier closes. The pub shortens its hours. The village hollows out.

What worries me most is that this erosion is happening quietly, politely, without the drama that usually forces political reckoning. There’s no single villain. No obvious cliff edge. Just a steady draining away of viability until one day we look around and wonder where everyone went.

The countryside isn’t a theme park or a television backdrop. It’s an economic ecosystem that feeds us, employs us and anchors communities. Once it’s gone, you don’t rebuild it with grants and slogans.

I learnt to shoot because a gamekeeper trusted me with his craft. That trust, between land and people, tradition and modernity, economy and culture, is what’s really under threat. If policymakers keep treating rural Britain as a sentimental inconvenience rather than a strategic asset, they may wake up one day to find the countryside still looks beautiful… but no longer works. And that, unlike a missed clay, is a mistake you don’t get to take another shot at.

Read more:
I worry for our rural economy – and yes, it’s personal

Let’s be absolutely candid: the siren song of easing off climate commitments is tempting the corporate class and it stinks.

If 2025 was indeed the year business quietly began retreating from net zero, watering down pledges or scrapping them outright, then 2026 must be the year UK firms rediscover backbone and purpose. After all, the alternative isn’t merely inconvenient; it is recklessly self-defeating.

The Guardian’s recent investigation suggests that, from retailers to banks, carmakers to councils, pledges once trumpeted from press release rooftops are being softened or shelved. The rhetoric of carbon-neutral economies now reads, all too often, like a relic of corporate virtue signalling rather than a serious business strategy.

Yet here’s the part no executive memo seems to state with enough clarity: net zero isn’t a fad. It is the defining economic transformation of our era, as seismic as electrification or the internet. Treat it as a mere box-ticking exercise and you will wake up in a world where markets and reputations have passed you by.

Let’s dismantle the fearmongering for a moment. There’s a narrative circulating among the financially cautious that climate action is a cost rather than an investment. That delivering net-zero targets detracts from near-term profits. That shareholders want dividends, not decarbonisation. And then there’s the grumbling about regulation: “not now, not yet, don’t you see we have bills to pay?”

Balderdash. Yes, there are genuine short-term costs to decarbonisation. But those are far outweighed by long-term economic opportunity. Research by credible bodies such as the British Chambers of Commerce and McKinsey shows the net-zero transition could be worth over £1 trillion to UK business by 2030, through innovation, exports and first-mover advantage. That’s not greenwash: that’s maths.

Indeed, if British business becomes the laggard rather than the leader, it won’t just cede moral high ground, it will cede market share. Markets today are global, and buyers increasingly demand sustainability from their suppliers. Investors are doing the same. Lenders, insurers and big pension funds are incorporating climate risk into pricing and capital allocation in ways that will only intensify. To flinch now is to risk being uninvestable in the very near future.

Some might counter that regulatory uncertainty, especially post-Brexit policy shifts or political swings, makes sustained net-zero commitments precarious. And yes, the political landscape has been fractious. But that’s exactly why business leadership matters. When politicians waver, when policy is debated, corporate resolve can act as the stable anchor for long-term strategy. Step back and someone else will fill the vacuum — and it won’t be challengers with sustainability at their core.

Let’s touch on those sectors where back-tracking has been most glaring in 2025. Finance, for instance, saw cracks in its climate alliance frameworks with departures from net-zero banking coalitions. Banks such as HSBC delayed parts of their climate goals, drawing sharp criticism.

The logical leap here, that commitments can be postponed when the going gets tough, is exactly where the sceptics win. But imagine the message it sends if UK banks, the very institutions underwriting corporate growth, say they will only play ball when profits are guaranteed. It instantly undermines trust in the entire system of environmental, social and governance (ESG) integration in corporate strategy.

Retailers, too, have delayed ambitions. Supply-chain complexities and cost pressures are cited as reasons. But shoving targets back a decade or more does not solve those issues; it merely kicks the problem into the future.

And let’s not pretend automotive and aviation are immune, areas where clear net-zero pathways have, in places, ground to a halt. Travelling for Business recently highlighted how even policy support has become ambivalent.

So, where do we go from here? First: reaffirmation, not revision, of net-zero commitments. Ambition must translate into actionable, transparent transition plans rooted in science — not adjustable targets that bend in the breeze of short-term pressures.

Second: collaboration over retreat. Businesses big and small should lean into frameworks like the Science Based Targets initiative, which offers rigorous, scientifically grounded pathways to emission reductions. These are not gimmicks; they are industry-agnostic roadmaps to resilience.

Third: innovate, don’t abdicate. Let’s double down on electrification, circular economy models, and zero emissions supply chains. And let’s bring SMEs along for the ride. Data from the latest UK Net Zero Business Census shows that a majority of larger firms still regard net zero as strategic — a sign of encouragement if acted upon.

Finally, let’s call out the folly of short-termism. I am no romantic, nor a climate activist by trade. But business is nothing without its reputational capital. The choice is simple: be remembered as the generation that met the challenge of our age with grit and ingenuity, or the one that blinked.

UK business must not water down its net-zero pledges in 2026. Not because it’s easy, but because it is the only credible path to sustainable growth, investor confidence and competitive advantage in a rapidly reshaping global economy.

Read more:
Net zero isn’t a luxury: why UK business must keep its nerve in 2026

The statistics present a stark business reality. Research indicates that nearly one in three UK workers experience bullying during their careers, whilst sexual harassment remains persistently underreported despite heightened regulatory scrutiny.

Behind each statistic lies productivity loss, potential litigation, and reputational risk. Yet the human cost, employees who feel silenced, diminished, and trapped, remains the most urgent concern for forward-thinking organisations.

After years working alongside individuals navigating these experiences, one truth persists: finding your voice isn’t merely an act of courage, it’s a fundamental right that organisations must actively protect rather than inadvertently suppress.

Before organisations can respond effectively, clarity is essential. Workplace bullying manifests as repeated, unreasonable behaviour directed at individuals or groups that creates health and safety risks. This transcends occasional professional disagreements. We’re examining persistent patterns: public humiliation, deliberately withholding business-critical information, systematic exclusion from decision-making forums, and professional isolation.

Sexual harassment constitutes unwanted conduct of a sexual nature that violates dignity or creates intimidating, hostile, degrading or offensive environments. The spectrum ranges from inappropriate appearance-related comments and sexual jokes to unwanted physical contact, requests for sexual favours, and sharing explicit materials. After 14 years in financial services, I recognise these patterns intimately.

Critically, intent is irrelevant. If conduct causes discomfort and would reasonably be considered offensive, it constitutes harassment regardless of whether perpetrators claim they were “just joking.” The line between bullying and sexual harassment often blurs, particularly when harassment involves power dynamics mirroring bullying tactics. Both diminish professional standing and undermine organisational culture.

Strategic Response Frameworks

Effective organisational response requires understanding individual protection strategies before implementing systemic solutions.

Employees must record incidents immediately, dates, times, locations, specific words or actions, witnesses, and impact. Evidence collection, screenshots, e-mails, messages—create irrefutable records that withstand scrutiny when memories fade or details are disputed.

Clear statements such as “That comment is inappropriate and must stop” or “This behaviour constitutes bullying and needs to end” can prove powerful. Perpetrators rely on ambiguity and silence; directness disrupts established patterns.

Harassment thrives in isolation. Identifying trusted colleagues who can corroborate experiences or who face similar treatment strengthens cases significantly. Patterns of behaviour prove harder to dismiss than isolated incidents.

At Invicta Vita, we develop personalised strategies acknowledging both emotional complexity and practical business realities. We help individuals assess circumstances, understand options, and build response plans prioritising wellbeing whilst protecting professional interests. Solutions range from formal complaints to strategic exits or negotiated departures. No single path exists, and informed choice, never coercion, must guide decisions.

The psychological toll of workplace harassment carries measurable business costs. Anxiety, depression, hypervigilance, insomnia, and stress-related physical symptoms represent common responses to sustained mistreatment. Early recognition proves essential for individual recovery and organisational risk management.

When harassment extends beyond office hours, mentally or digitally, damage compounds exponentially. Organisations must model healthy work-life separation: respecting evening and weekend boundaries, limiting after-hours communications, and creating clear rituals marking workday conclusions.

Access to therapists understanding workplace trauma provides tools for processing experiences whilst maintaining professional identity. Cognitive behavioural approaches counter negative self-talk that harassment installs. Organisations that facilitate confidential professional support demonstrate genuine commitment to employee wellbeing.

Professional peer support groups and specialist organisations offer perspective, validation, and practical guidance during isolation periods. Progressive organisations facilitate these connections rather than viewing them as threats.

The Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023, effective October 2024, represents a fundamental shift in employer accountability. Employers now carry legal duty to take reasonable steps preventing sexual harassment of workers. This transcends reactive incident response—it’s a proactive obligation with teeth.

Compliance requirements include comprehensive risk assessments, clear policy implementation, mandatory training programmes, and functional reporting mechanisms. The legislation introduces third-party harassment liability, meaning employers face accountability when clients, customers, or contractors harass staff.

The Equality Act 2010 provides primary protection against harassment related to protected characteristics including sex, race, disability, age, religion, and sexual orientation. Employees retain rights to raise grievances, protection from victimisation, and access to employment tribunals. Time limits matter critically, generally three months minus one day from incidents, making prompt legal consultation essential.

Non-compliance carries significant costs: tribunal awards, reputational damage, talent retention challenges, and productivity losses. Forward-thinking organisations view compliance not as a regulatory burden but as competitive advantage in talent markets increasingly prioritising workplace culture.

The HR Function: Redefining the Role

Here’s the uncomfortable truth that business leaders must confront: HR serves organisational interests first. Whilst many HR professionals bring genuine compassion and integrity, their primary obligation involves protecting companies from legal and reputational risk. When harassers hold significant power or generate substantial revenue, profound conflicts of interest emerge.

I’ve observed capable HR teams navigating these tensions with integrity—conducting thorough investigations and recommending meaningful consequences regardless of perpetrator status. I have also witnessed HR departments prioritising damage control over justice, pressuring complainants toward inadequate resolutions, or conducting investigations designed to reach predetermined conclusions.

The strategic question: Should businesses demand more of HR? Absolutely. But structural reform requires realistic acknowledgment of systemic constraints. Meaningful change requires:

• Board-level accountability flowing downward through all management levels
• Independent complaint mechanisms with genuine authority
• Cultures where speaking up carries protection rather than merely rhetorical praise
• Transparent investigation processes with qualified, impartial investigators
• Consistent consequences regardless of perpetrator seniority or revenue generation

When employees approach HR, strategic documentation matters. Written complaints trump verbal conversations. Specific investigation timelines, investigator qualifications, and process transparency must be standard. Both parties document everything—power balance requires it.

The Organisational Imperative

For business leaders, the message is clear: workplace harassment represents enterprise risk requiring strategic mitigation. The costs, legal, reputational, and cultural, of inadequate response exceed prevention investment by orders of magnitude.

Employees deserve workplaces where dignity is non-negotiable and contributions are valued. When environments cannot provide this, talented individuals increasingly exercise their most powerful option: taking their skills elsewhere. That’s not defeat, that’s market dynamics punishing cultural failures.

Organisations with robust anti-harassment frameworks, transparent reporting mechanisms, and consistent accountability attract and retain top talent. Those treating harassment as PR problems face mounting difficulties in increasingly transparent talent markets where culture reputations spread rapidly through professional networks and employer review platforms.

The system remains imperfect, but organisations are not powerless. The question isn’t whether to invest in comprehensive harassment prevention, it’s whether your business can afford not to. In an era where culture is currency and talent is a competitive advantage, the answer becomes increasingly obvious.

Your employees’ voices matter. Your response to them defines your organisation’s character, competitive position, and long-term viability. Strategic wisdom demands nothing less than comprehensive action.

Read more:
Finding Your Voice: Confronting Workplace Bullying and Sexual Harassment

Every January, millions of people resolve to get healthier. They join gyms, hire trainers, and put themselves in environments engineered for progress. The formula is obvious: the right expertise, the right structure, and the right people make improvements inevitable.

Yet when it comes to our businesses, the engines that employ people and shape industries, we often operate in isolation. We grind away alone, convinced that needing input is somehow an admission of weakness. And after building multi-million-pound companies, we tell ourselves we should have all the answers by now.

But the founders who scale fastest understand something important. Business health requires continuous investment, expert insight, and a community strong enough to hold you accountable to your ambitions.

Running a scale-up company means facing decisions that are rarely simple and never something you can solve through a quick internet search. Should you expand internationally? How do you keep a key hire who is wavering? What capital structure will get you through the next phase of growth?

Is now the moment to acquire, or the moment to be acquired?

These are not questions you eventually figure out through trial and error. They are questions that grow heavier the longer you hesitate. Meanwhile, competitors who seek support, challenge their thinking, and move with speed advance.

I have watched exceptional founders spend months debating a move that a peer, someone who has already navigated the same crossroads, could have helped them resolve in a single afternoon. That lost time is not hypothetical. It is lost revenue, lost positioning, and lost momentum. And momentum, once gone, is incredibly difficult to regain.

When you consistently engage with other founders who operate at your level, everything shifts. Problems that felt overwhelming shrink down to size. Blind spots become visible. Opportunities you would have missed suddenly come into focus. You begin to recognise patterns because you are learning from the lived experience of others who have already paid the price for those insights.

This is not networking in the traditional sense. It is not swapping business cards over canapés. It is about building a trusted circle of people who carry the same weight, face the same pressures, and understand the stakes in a way no investor, adviser, or team member ever can.

Inside our community at Helm, I have seen founders cut their time to decision on major strategic calls by more than half. Not because they rush, but because they move with clarity. They pressure test assumptions, tap into collective intelligence, and learn in hours what would have taken years to uncover alone.

The gym analogy is more literal than it sounds. Turning up once changes nothing. Showing up consistently changes everything. The founders who get real value treat peer engagement as a discipline. They block time for Forums the same way they block time for investor meetings. They show up prepared. They contribute. They understand that a community only works when every member is committed to the health of the whole.

As you set your priorities for the year ahead, ask yourself a simple question: are you investing in the health of your business with the same intentionality you invest in your own?

If you want to accelerate in 2026, working harder in isolation will not get you there. Surrounding yourself with the right people will. Founders who have overcome the challenges you are facing. Founders who challenge your assumptions and push you to think bigger and execute better.

The businesses that will dominate the next decade will not be led by lone wolves. They will be led by founders who understand that speed comes from shared intelligence, and growth accelerates when you stop solving every problem for the first time.

Your business deserves the same commitment, discipline, and care that you give your body every January. Make 2026 the year you invest in its health properly.

Read more:
Treat Your Business Like Your Body This New Year 

On the first day of Christmas, my mentor taught to me, resilience as a growth strategy…

Christmas is a time for slowing down, relaxing, and resetting for the year ahead. For the SME leaders we work with on our Help to Grow: Management Course, it provides the opportunity to reflect on the year gone by and think about the new strategies and tactics required to ensure the new year is merry and bright. But also, to reflect upon their own role in leading the business.

Here are twelve practical lessons that I’ve learnt from working with small business leaders across many different sectors and our community of expert business school members.

Resilience as a growth strategy

Imagine a business that is not only equipped to withstand economic disruption, but which can also rapidly adapt to changing market conditions and seize new opportunities. The most resilient SMEs that I have worked with do exactly that – facing down uncertainty while maintaining a competitive edge.

This includes setting a strategy for growth and innovation that embeds agility, leading with purpose and bringing the team onboard with you through changes. A key part of the Help to Grow: Management Course is understanding that new challenges are more than just obstacles to overcome, rather opportunities to learn, innovate and build momentum for long-term success.

Imposter syndrome

When clarity starts to emerge, the next big shift is confidence. You can build a brilliant plan but without self-belief, it’s unlikely you’ll move forward. Developing your knowledge and a support network will help you build your confidence as a leader and build your business.

Louise Morgan, founder and director of TMPR and Help to Grow: Management alumni, says: “For me personally, imposter syndrome is a deep-rooted feeling that my company has been built on luck rather than by design. Our growth doesn’t feel earned – it feels accidental. The key for small business leaders is to be able to identify this challenge in themselves and take advantage of support networks to overcome the threat of feeling like a fraud.”

Seek out mentors and people in your shoes

One of the biggest highlights for our alumni is the value of having a mentor and a peer group to share ideas and challenges with. Business leaders who have been there and done it, but also those at a similar stage of their leadership or business evolution. Outside perspective brings business benefits and makes the growth journey more enjoyable.

Richard Sadler, Director, CJC Aggregates and Landscaping Supplies: “My mentor on the Help to Grow: Management Course challenged me in the right ways. Rather than thinking about just drawing in customers, my mentor encouraged me to consider how we get more returning customers who want to spend more with us. During a time of real growth, he made me see we could change our existing business to be more profitable.”

Get your organisational structure right

With a community of more than 10,000 small business leaders, we’re helping SMEs from a huge variety of different sectors but organisational design and employee engagement are important for every industry. Pruden & Smith, bespoke and handmade luxury jeweller, has achieved record revenues a year after its creative director Rebecca Smith completed the 90% government-funded Help to Grow: Management Course at University of Brighton, School of Business and Law. Her main takeaway was how to face into restructuring her team.

Entrepreneur and creative director at Pruden & Smith, Rebecca Smith, said: “I think many small businesses like ours struggle because they aren’t putting the right organisational structures in place to support growth. As an entrepreneur, I’ve never worked in a large organisation so didn’t even really know the names of the roles we would require as we scaled into a bigger business.Restructuring allowed us to provide clarity around existing roles but also outline development paths so individuals could see how they would progress in the future. The process allowed me to identify which areas I should be stepping out of, but it also gave us real clarity on the roles we needed to underpin our growth. We recreated people’s jobs to fit that model.”

Productivity KPIs

A universal lesson from the course is to be crystal clear about what productivity means within the context of your business. Once a business pins down how to measure its productivity, KPIs can be set that align employees and activity around the same goal. This provides confidence that the critical KPIs, and not vanity metrics, are being tracked.

Small adjustments often make a noticeable difference – for example, simplifying systems to reduce wasted effort, or reviewing processes with the team to spot where work slows down. The aim is to use these metrics to support smarter decisions, not to add reporting for the sake of it.

You don’t need to be an accountant

But you do need a firm grip on the financials. A trait I’ve consistently observed from successful business leaders is that they properly understand the what’s what of finance and financial management, when to seek growth funding and how to prepare for key investment raising activities.

Knowing your figures helps you manage risk, pace growth, and spot where margins can be strengthened. It also gives you confidence when talking to lenders, partners, or potential investors.

Know how to use your time wisely

A mother of three young children, alumni Lauren works three days a week on her business Guthrie & Ghani – making strategic focus, prioritisation, and strong management essential for success.

Lauren Guthrie, founder of Guthrie & Ghani and former finalist on the first series of The Great British Sewing Bee, commented  “I didn’t have the right frame of mind before the course. Having gone through Help to Grow: Management, I learnt how to think about growth, what to evaluate, and how to structure the business to support it. The course helped me put the right structures in place to maintain my ethos and grow while balancing my family life. Now, I know that the limited time I have is spent on the things that really matter.”

You don’t know what you don’t know

It doesn’t matter how many years of experience we as leaders have, there is always the opportunity to learn more, and to validate or recalibrate that you are leading your organisation on the right path.

Paul Kenny, Managing Director of Yorkshire-based Aquatrust: “My journey wasn’t linear – I didn’t go to university, and my A Level results weren’t what I’d hoped for. But I found opportunities, worked hard, and kept learning. Enrolling on the Help to Grow: Management Course in 2022 was my first real experience of returning to formal education – at the age of 50/51. It came at a crucial time in my career and gave me a real plan and purpose for my business. Help to Grow: Management reignited that learning mindset and gave me the tools to lead Aquatrust into its next chapter.”

Moving from corporate career to SME leadership is a steep learning curve

Leaders making this shift often say they gain a deeper appreciation for how each part of the business contributes to performance. With that comes a greater sense of responsibility, but also the chance to understand the full extent of leading a growing business and make decisions with real pace.

Karsten Smet, CEO of ACI Group and alumni said this about his own experience of switching careers: ‘What happens when you’ve been in a C-level position at large organisations is you don’t know how SMEs work. You don’t necessarily understand how all the different components really fit together or how decisions are made. The Help to Grow: Management Course gave me this understanding and time to clarify my business’s future and make my organisation one that my employees were invested in.”

It’s never too early to look at exporting

Exploring overseas markets encourages firms to refine their offering, strengthen processes, and build resilience through diversification.

Byron Dixon MBE, chair of the Small Business Charter and founder of Micro-Fresh, says: “I can’t overestimate the degree to which exporting can transform a business’ trajectory – it certainly did for mine. It’s also so much easier than it was 20 years ago, and there is so much fantastic support on offer. Yet, too many SME leaders delay exporting much longer than necessary. They wait until they’ve exhausted domestic opportunities, or until growth plateaus. Sometimes they just never see it as an option for them at all. To those in that position, I’d say this: the question shouldn’t be “When should we export?” but rather “Why aren’t we already exporting?”

Work ON the business, not IN it

Taking time away from day-to-day pressures helps leaders think about capacity, future skills, and the investments that will shape the next phase of growth. Critically it also provides the opportunity to think about their own role and how that contributes towards growth.

Rachel Hicken, Pig & Olive co-founder and alumni: “I’m very good at service, my co-founder Simon knows his pizzas – but that’s not enough if you don’t understand the backbone of running a business. Help to Grow: Management really set off my journey of learning about business. It helped me realise I needed to stop just working IN the business and started working ON it. I learnt that growth requires leaders to step back and look at the big picture. It also gave me the confidence to look at figures properly and understand the story they tell and gave me the confidence to make strategic investments.”

Treat succession planning as a growth strategy, not just an exit strategy

In conversations we’ve had with family-owned business leaders over the last five years, we’ve seen that proactive succession planning leads to stability, builds resilience, and unlocks growth for the business. The data backs it up; according to STEP, 74% of family businesses with a succession plan agree that having a plan has made their business stronger and helped them to grow.

Having these conversations early reduces uncertainty for staff and gives future leaders the confidence to step forward. It also creates room to plan investment and allocate responsibilities more thoughtfully.

Jingle all the way into the new year

As the year draws to a close, I hope these bite-size lessons show how practical choices, steady reflection and a willingness to learn can strengthen any growing business. With renewed focus and a bit of breathing space, you as SME leaders can enter the new year with purpose and confidence.

Business leaders can find out more about the Help to Grow: Management Course and sign up for the course in their area by visiting: www.smallbusinesscharter.org/help-to-grow-management

Read more:
The Twelve Days of Business

Each December, the festive season seems to arrive sooner than expected. As employees strive to meet year-end deadlines, the responsibility of organising the annual Christmas social arises without warning.

Although securing a venue may appear straightforward, the complexities of balancing budgets and schedules can render an additional strain on already demanding workloads.

However, these end-of-year gatherings hold more significance than most people realise.They represent one of the few opportunities for teams to pause and reconnect before another year begins. When executed effectively, these events remind employees why they enjoy working together.

Drawing on my experience organising social events through StreetHunt Games, for over 4000 teams, I’ve seen what separates a good event from one that people talk about long after it’s over.

Why does connection matter?

With stress levels and burnout continuing to rise across workplaces, employee recognition should remain a central priority for organisational leaders. Researchers from People Management Insight suggest that acknowledging employees’ individual talents can play a crucial role in preventing burnout and enhancing well-being. Beyond this, the desire for authentic connection often becomes even more pronounced during the holiday season.

A thoughtfully planned Christmas event can offer employees a valuable opportunity to step away from their daily responsibilities and decompress. More importantly, well-executed corporate socials can serve as a meaningful expression of appreciation. Moments of validation can strengthen workplace culture in ways that quarterly check-ins or corporate slogans fail to.

Don’t overthink it

When the event finally arrives, there can be a tendency to overfill the schedule in an effort to make the experience feel substantial. However, the most successful events are rarely the most elaborate; rather, they feel effortless and authentic.

Employees often seek opportunities to relax and reconnect beyond their regular work environment. Simple Christmas team activities tend to foster the most memorable nights for colleagues. In these settings, motivation and enjoyment stem from genuine social engagement rather than the intricacy of the event.

For example, corporate groups participating in a StreetHunt experience frequently describe their favourite moments not as the structured elements of the game itself, but as the spontaneous interactions that emerge during it. Such as witnessing quieter team members gain confidence and actively contribute. These small, unscripted connections often become the highlight everyone remembers.

After playing one of StreetHunt Games outdoor escape rooms, the director of a global recruitment company said: ‘Competing as a team is great fun – the degrees of competitiveness and the problem-solving approach style of each member shines through. Everybody’s skills and experience help shape the result. It’s a fun process and part of why working with people sharing a common goal is fun.

Building a strong culture as a team is super important, though – taking time as a leader to get to know individuals and help foster connections is like walking a tightrope. Team culture can mean and be lots of different things, but when aligned well, it helps drive people forward and build future success.’

Focus on shared experience

Ultimately, it is not the physical setting that determines the success of a Christmas party, but the quality of the shared experiences it brings. Whether it’s a collaborative challenge, a city-based adventure, or a shared meal, the objective is to embrace connections among team members.

At StreetHunt Games, this has been observed repeatedly; the location quickly becomes the background to the collective experience. Getting a team out of their office and into a different physical location helps to create moments of teamwork, laughter, and shared discovery, which resonate far more deeply. And not just a different physical environment, but also the purpose of what they’re doing, changing – from working together on a consulting project to bonding over a fun challenge.

Activities that promote movement, a different type of problem-solving, and light-hearted competition often generate a stronger sense of engagement and cohesion. In this way, creative alternatives can leave a far stronger impression than a perfectly decorated venue or a three-course dinner.  Research from Bamboo HR stated that colleague communication improves after team-building activities and 61% said morale is improved.

A genuine thank-you

End-of-year socials should not be perceived as obligations but as a genuine celebration for your team’s collective achievement. A moment that conveys, “Thank you, your efforts make a difference.” Employee recognition remains one of the most influential factors in loyalty and retention among employees. Research from People Management Insight indicates that authentic expressions of appreciation significantly enhance employees’ sense of value and motivation. Ranging from personalised notes to thoughtful words are sincere gestures of gratitude, leaving an impact well into the new year.

When employees feel genuinely seen and appreciated, the overall team dynamic transforms. What might otherwise be an end-of-year obligation instead becomes a meaningful celebration of contribution. These activities can reinforce morale and strengthen the organisation’s collective work culture.

Common pitfalls to avoid

Even the most well-intentioned organisers can encounter challenges when planning end-of-year socials. Several common pitfalls can diminish the overall impact of an event:

• Over-planning: Allow space for spontaneity. Some of the most meaningful interactions occur organically rather than through a structured itinerary. Simplicity often enables more genuine engagement.
• Focusing too much on expensive venues: Employees are more likely to remember how they felt during the event than the details of the surroundings. Resources are best invested in experiences that facilitate connection rather than extravagant venues.
• Forgetting hybrid or remote employees: Inclusivity matters; consider how to make everyone feel a part of the celebration. Failing to do so can induce feelings of disconnection and contribute to burnout in the year ahead.
• Losing sight of purpose: Remember, this isn’t just another corporate event, but an opportunity to thank your team. Keep this experience personal and expand connections between colleagues.

From stress to success

The most effective Christmas team event doesn’t have to be something extravagant; it has to be intentional and meaningful. Their purpose is to remind employees of what they have accomplished collectively and to send them into the new year with a renewed sense of connection and belonging.

At StreetHunt Games, we have consistently observed the balance of laughter, collaboration, and light-hearted competition that can transform colleagues into genuine collaborators.  When an event feels human rather than corporate, it resonates more deeply to create memories long after the festive season has ended.

Overall, the most valuable approach to planning corporate socials is to prioritise authenticity over complexity. Keep the experience simple and filled with genuine appreciation. In doing so, the great gift leaders can offer their team is recognition that their effort and dedication truly mattered.

Read more:
From planning to applause – How to run a Christmas team event they’ll talk about in January

There was a time – not so long ago, though it already feels sepia-tinted – when London was the sort of place that tourists arrived in with stars in their eyes and left with shopping bags cutting off circulation at the fingers.

Harrods bags, Selfridges bags, Mulberry bags, the bright yellow of Fortnum’s peeking out of a suitcase being sat on in a hotel lobby. Europe’s favourite grown-up playground; Manhattan’s chic transatlantic sibling; Tokyo’s idea of European swagger with better tailoring and more chaotic restaurants.

And somehow, somewhere between the end of the pandemic and the beginning of whatever this new national habit of self-sabotage is, we decided that this was all terribly inconvenient.

Because now, instead of rolling out the red carpet to high-spending visitors who fund vast swathes of our hospitality and retail industries, we appear determined to trip them up with a series of policy banana skins. A kind of bureaucratic Mario Kart, except instead of cartoon plumbers skidding off Rainbow Road, it’s Andrea Baldo at Mulberry watching millions evaporate from his London tills.

First came the abolition of tax-free shopping, what the press politely calls the “tourist tax”, but business leaders now refer to in much the same tone one reserves for a wasp nest in the loft. It was, in the gentle phrasing of one retail boss, a “massive global disadvantage”. He’s not wrong. France woos Chinese visitors with instant VAT refunds at Charles de Gaulle, Italy practically hands tourists a Prosecco as they process theirs. Meanwhile, we greet them with the fiscal equivalent of a traffic warden in a foul mood.

Retail chiefs have been patient – or at least, as patient as you can be when pointing out, month after month, that the maths simply does not work. Tourists want the thrill of a VAT-free splurge. If we don’t offer it, they simply go elsewhere. Hence the growing chorus from the likes of Mulberry’s Baldo, who has watched London sales tank while Paris boutiques hum along nicely. It doesn’t take a PwC report to see what’s happening: shoppers follow value, and value has emigrated.

You might think the lesson here is obvious. If you want tourists, the big-spending sort who treat a long weekend as an Olympic sport, then don’t whack them with a levy the moment they land. You’d imagine, perhaps naively, that the next step would be to reverse the damage, or at least stop adding new obstacles.

But no. This is London. And in London, when there’s an opportunity to make a bad idea worse, we seize it with both hands and a press release.

Step forward Sadiq Khan, announcing with great flourish the potential introduction of a second tourist tax – a nightly levy on hotel stays that would, we are told, “supercharge London’s economy”. Which is an interesting definition of “supercharge”, unless we’ve started using the word to mean “ask people for more money so they spend less of it elsewhere”.

This proposed hotel levy, trumpeted as bringing the capital in line with other global cities, is the second punch in a one-two assault that the hospitality sector absolutely did not ask for. Because let’s be clear: London is not Barcelona, drowning in stag dos stripping in fountains. Nor is it Amsterdam, declaring war on the Hen Party Industrial Complex. London’s issue is not too many tourists — it’s that we are making ourselves unattractive to the ones we need.

Which is why the hospitality sector is looking a bit like a boxer in the 11th round, wobbling slightly, blood in the eye, muttering “Really? Another one?”

Hotels have only just crawled out of the Covid crater. Staffing costs up. Energy bills up. Supply chain madness. Then a visitor economy still recovering from the years when the only people checking into hotels were essential workers and couples pretending they were “working from home”. Revenues are fragile. Margins are thin. And now a city-hall-branded surcharge?

The timing is astonishing. Just as business travellers, the holy grail of midweek occupancy, begin to return… just as American tourists rediscover the joys of London theatre and pubs with carpets… just as Asia resumes sending coachloads of shoppers armed with Amex and enthusiasm… we decide to hand them a bill for having turned up at all.

What message does this send? The same as the VAT-refund fiasco: London is becoming the most expensive city in Europe to visit, and the least rewarding.

It is fundamentally a failure of imagination. Instead of asking “How do we compete?”, policymakers seem content to ask, “How much can we get away with before someone books Berlin instead?”

The answer, increasingly, is: not much.

Because tourists talk. They compare. They calculate. And when your long-haul holiday already costs thousands, and the pound is weak, and hotels are pricier than ever, that extra nightly charge isn’t symbolic – it’s irritating. Add in the lack of VAT refunds and suddenly a weekend that once felt like a treat becomes an exercise in fiscal masochism.

All this might be palatable if the revenue raised were earmarked for something dazzling — a transport revolution, a cultural renaissance, a hospitality uplift so extraordinary that visitors would queue to pay. But the rhetoric is vague, the benefits theoretical, and the impact on the ground immediate.

The truth is brutally simple: London thrives when it is welcoming, frictionless, rewarding and – crucially – competitive. What we have instead is a creeping perception that our leaders view tourists not as valued guests, but as walking wallets from which to extract just a bit more because, well, they can.

The hospitality and retail sectors don’t need another tax. They need policymakers who understand that the visitor economy is not a tap that can be turned on and off at whim. It is delicate, reactive, easily diverted.

Right now, we are steering it away.

London doesn’t need a second tourist tax. It needs a second thought.

Read more:
Is the government intent on killing London’s hospitality sector with a double-whammy tourist tax?

When Britain’s adopted steel king Lakshmi Mittal, gala-favourite philanthropist and one of the country’s most visible billionaire residents, quietly announced he was shifting his tax residency to Switzerland, it barely caused a ripple in Westminster.

Another wealthy non-dom heading for more forgiving fiscal pastures, shrugged the commentariat.

But for anyone paying attention to Britain’s charitable sector, Mittal’s departure is more than a footnote in a tax-policy debate. It is a red flag. A warning. A canary collapsing in the philanthropic coal mine.

Mittal is not leaving because of boredom with Belgravia. As Business Matters reported, his exit follows the dismantling of the non-dom system and, critically, the looming threat of UK inheritance tax on his global estate. He is not alone. Norwegian shipping billionaire John Fredriksen, German investor Christian Angermayer, and tech founders Herman Narula (Improbable) and Nik Storonsky (Revolut) have already slipped out of Heathrow with one recurring reason circled in red: UK tax policy.

And this, however we try to frame it, poses an awkward question.  One the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, hasn’t quite acknowledged in her rush to tighten the fiscal screws: if Britain is pushing out the very people who fund its museums, universities, research institutes, and children’s hospitals, could UK charities be the biggest losers of her brave new tax world?

Let’s be honest. Charities don’t live on wishful thinking. They live on cheques. And while the British public is generous in spirit, it is the handful of ultra-wealthy donors, people like Mittal, who quietly bank-roll the big stuff: endowments, buildings, specialist medical equipment, entire research departments. Mittal himself has given millions over decades to Great Ormond Street Hospital, to public libraries, to the arts, to humanitarian causes, to Oxford University. When such people stay, Britain wins. When they leave, Britain loses.

This isn’t a defence of tax privileges for the wealthy. Reeves is right to say the system needed reform. But there is a difference between fixing a loophole and creating a deterrent. Between modernising policy and frightening away those who play an outsized role in keeping Britain’s charitable landscape afloat.

The truth, and it feels almost unfashionable to say it aloud, is that major philanthropy is highly sensitive to tax signals. Wealthy donors don’t just give out of generosity; they give within systems that make generosity rational. Alter the incentives, tighten the inheritance-tax net, abolish the regime that made London competitive, and suddenly Dubai or Zug begins to look less like a holiday bolthole and more like a sensible postcode.

And when donors exit, charities suffer twice. First, through the immediate loss of multimillion-pound gifts. Second, through the long-term shift in their funding model: fewer large, flexible philanthropic donations and greater reliance on small public gifts that, while admirable, rarely pay for the expensive or unglamorous parts of a charity’s work, the electricity bill, the IT system, the nurses’ salaries, the safeguarding training. The things no one wants their name on.

It is too simple and too glib for ministers to argue that “fairness” trumps all. Fairness to whom? A tax system that chases out philanthropists may technically be fairer, but it may also leave the nation’s most vulnerable without the funding safety-net that government has neither the budget nor political appetite to replace.

What’s more, philanthropy carries a reputational weight. Billionaires giving large sums in Britain sends a signal that the UK is still a place where causes flourish, research advances and culture thrives. When they relocate, the narrative shifts: from “Britain, philanthropic powerhouse” to “Britain, too expensive to care”.

Charities know this. They’ve known it for years. But they also know something uncomfortable: you can’t replace a Mittal with 10,000 £20 donations. Not when you’re funding MRI machines, scientific breakthroughs or entire children’s hospices.

So where does this leave us? Ideally, with a little honesty. The government must recognise that smart tax policy is not only about fairness but about outcomes. If Reeves wants to avoid turning charity CEOs into professional beggars, she may need to pair her reforms with targeted incentives for high-impact giving or risk watching the voluntary sector shrink in real time.

Charities, meanwhile, must prepare for a new era: flatter donor lists, heavier dependence on domestic donors, and more resource-intensive fundraising just to stand still. The days of relying on a handful of loyal billionaire patrons might be ending, and not because the donors changed their hearts, but because the government changed the rules.

If the exodus continues  if more Mittals, more Fredriksens, more Narulas pack their bags the question will not be whether Reeves’s tax shake-up was principled. It will be whether the price was too high, too blunt and too blind to its collateral damage.

And the greatest losers may not be the wealthy at all but the charities who depend on them, and the people those charities exist to help.

Read more:
The rich are fleeing and our charities may be left holding the bill

When I first started taking clients out for dinner, you could sit under the copper dome of Le Gavroche, order a bottle of claret you’d never dare drink at home, and—after a couple of courses, a soufflé, and a few discreet nods from the maître d’—leave only mildly lighter in wallet and spirit.

Today, on the same site, you can do much the same thing at Matt Abé’s new venture Bonheur. Only now, the bill for two will come in at £250 before you’ve even blinked at the digestif list.

I’m not one for false nostalgia—restaurants must evolve, chefs must be paid, and if anyone’s earned the right to resurrect a Mayfair temple of gastronomy it’s Abé. But there’s a creeping sense that fine dining has priced itself into absurdity. And for once, it’s not just about greedy restaurateurs; it’s about the country we’ve built around them.

Energy bills have soared. Not just yours or mine, but those of restaurants that rely on gas ranges, endless refrigeration, and enough light to flatter every banker’s jowls. Add to that the cost of labour in an industry already haemorrhaging staff post-Brexit, and suddenly that tasting menu looks less like an indulgence and more like a desperate act of financial survival.

The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, would like us to believe that things are finally “stabilising”. I’ve seen more stability in a soufflé during a Tube strike. Her Treasury may be trying to keep business afloat, but when small restaurants are seeing energy costs double, the effect is akin to throwing a life jacket to a man who’s already under the water.

Fine dining, long the glitzy tip of the hospitality iceberg, is the first to feel the cracks. It was never about volume or turnover; it was about art. A kitchen like Abé’s depends on precision, patience, and prodigiously expensive ingredients that can’t be bought in bulk. When your butter alone costs more than most people’s rent, “value for money” ceases to be a meaningful phrase.

Once upon a time, £160-£180 for two was a generous way to mark a birthday or sign a contract. Now it’s merely the entry fee for breathing the same air as a Michelin inspector. And before the chorus begins: yes, I know what goes into it. I’ve sat in enough stainless-steel kitchens to appreciate the choreography of twenty cooks plating thirty dishes in silence. I know the rent in Mayfair. I know what happens to a menu when olive oil triples in price.

But—and forgive the sentimentality—I also know what a restaurant used to mean. At Le Coq d’Argent or Claridge’s or Marcus Wareing’s at the Berkeley, you could justify the expense as part theatre, part negotiation. It was business done in a place that made everyone feel like someone. You weren’t buying food; you were buying atmosphere, attention, and a tiny square of London’s self-confidence.

Today, that same dinner feels faintly transactional. The food is exquisite, the wine list terrifyingly precise, and yet something human has been lost. When you know a single starter costs as much as the average family’s weekly shop, the pleasure sours slightly. The magic evaporates with the steam from the consommé.

Reeves’ problem—indeed, the country’s problem—is that we’ve stopped treating restaurants as part of the cultural ecosystem. When energy prices bite, when VAT hovers at the same rate as fast food, and when landlords charge what they like, the effect isn’t just fewer Michelin stars; it’s fewer apprentices, fewer suppliers, fewer reasons for tourists to bother crossing the Channel for dinner.

You can’t build an “innovation economy” on empty stomachs. Yet that’s what we seem to be trying. The government talks endlessly about growth while allowing one of Britain’s finest export industries—its hospitality scene—to suffocate under the weight of its own bills. Paris subsidises its bistros. Copenhagen practically canonises its chefs. In London, we just raise the price of the tasting menu and pretend everything’s fine.

Of course, there will always be those for whom £250 is a rounding error. The same crowd who will book Bonheur weeks ahead and post filtered shots of their langoustine tartlets. They’re not the problem. The problem is the steady disappearance of the middle ground—the diners who once treated a grand restaurant as a reachable luxury. Those people are now in bistros, if they’re out at all, calculating the cost of bread service.

When I took clients to the Savoy or Claridge’s, it wasn’t just about indulgence; it was diplomacy. Deals were signed over lamb cutlets and laughter. You can’t do that if your guest is nervously Googling “how much to tip on £500”. Fine dining relied on aspiration, not intimidation.

Perhaps we should stop pretending fine dining is for everyone. Let it be what it now is: haute couture, admired from afar. But if we do, we must also accept that Britain loses something. Our restaurants have long been the quiet stages of our national life—places where ambition met artistry, where even a tax accountant could feel momentarily glamorous.

Reeves can’t control every gas bill, but she can recognise that hospitality is not a luxury to be tolerated; it’s a craft to be preserved. Energy relief for small restaurants, tax breaks for training, a re-think of VAT for the sector—none of it would cost much compared to the cultural value at stake.

Because once the £250 dinner becomes the norm, it stops being dinner. It becomes a ceremony for the few, performed behind heavy curtains while the rest of us eat at home and wonder when exactly Britain forgot how to go out.

Read more:
Fine dining’s death by a thousand cuts, and at least a £250 bill

As a sustainable business owner, I’ve always believed that every choice we make, from the suppliers we trust to the packaging that carries our products, reflects our values.

But the conversation around packaging sustainability is evolving quickly, and 2025 is shaping up to be a defining year for anyone in this space.

The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) will soon change how every business that uses wood or paper packaging operates. Whether you export into the EU or source materials that pass through European supply chains, you’ll soon need to prove exactly where your wood came from, right down to the plot of land where the tree grew. On paper, this is a hugely positive step. It’s designed to prevent deforestation and ensure that every pallet, crate, box, or sheet of
paperboard comes from responsibly managed forests. But for small and medium-sized sustainable businesses like mine, this new legislation brings both validation and significant challenges.

For larger corporations, compliance may simply mean hiring dedicated teams or investing in advanced traceability systems. For smaller businesses, the impact is more personal and more complex. Many packaging suppliers, particularly those sourcing globally, aren’t yet ready to provide the level of GPS traceability that EUDR demands. As buyers, we’re several steps removed from the original forest. That makes collecting origin data extremely difficult.
The reality is that small businesses don’t have the same resources as large corporations. Gathering, verifying, and documenting the source of every piece of packaging takes time, money, and capacity that many SMEs simply don’t have. Even for companies like mine, built on sustainability from day one, the administrative burden is significant. There’s also a clear imbalance of power. When small businesses ask large suppliers for detailed traceability information, we’re often met with delays and a lack of data, yet we’re still held to the same legal standards as much larger companies.

The scale of work involved in becoming compliant is immense. Every box, tag, and piece of paper now requires a documented chain of custody which for a packaging company means the majority of our products. For a small business, this isn’t just a quick compliance exercise, it’s an ongoing operational project that touches almost every department. Teams that were once focused on creative design, marketing, or customer experience now find themselves deep in
due diligence, spreadsheets, and certification systems. It’s exhausting work, but it’s necessary if we want to maintain the integrity of our sustainability commitments and continue to trade responsibly in the years ahead.

At Tiny Box Company, we’ve been reviewing what the EUDR will mean for us for months now. We’re working closely with our suppliers to ensure the data we need is being captured at source, and we’re doing our best to gain information that is verifiable. It’s a huge effort, and at times it feels like we’re trying to rebuild the foundations of something we already thought was sturdy. But we also know that doing this groundwork now will set us up for a stronger, more transparent future.

Despite these challenges, the EUDR represents a powerful opportunity for businesses like ours. It’s a chance to demonstrate what we’ve been advocating for years: that transparency and traceability are not just ideals, but achievable and necessary goals. For those already committed to sustainability, this regulation provides a platform to prove it. Having verifiable data about our packaging doesn’t just satisfy compliance requirements, it builds trust with our
customers, who increasingly care not just about what a product is made from, but where it came from.

The EUDR is also encouraging more meaningful conversations between businesses and suppliers. To meet these requirements, we’ll need closer collaboration and greater openness, which can ultimately strengthen relationships and lead to more resilient supply chains. Over time, this transparency can help shift the market, rewarding those who operate responsibly and pushing lagging suppliers to catch up.

Another positive outcome is that it’s forcing all of us to reconsider how much packaging we really need. When every gram of wood or paper must be traced to its origin, using less suddenly makes both environmental and financial sense for a lot of businesses. At Tiny Box Company, we’ve already begun rethinking our designs and processes to reduce complexity, choosing materials that are easier to trace and verify. It’s a continuous process to improve what we’re doing and how we work.

It’s easy to see why some small businesses might feel overwhelmed- the paperwork, the data management, the coordination across global suppliers. But once these systems are in place, the benefits will start to show. We’ll have cleaner data, fewer weak points in our supply chains, and greater confidence in the materials we use. In time, the hours invested now could translate into reduced risk, smoother audits, and a stronger story for customers who value transparency.

The EUDR may feel daunting, particularly for small sustainable businesses that are already trying to do the right thing. But it’s important to see this as an opportunity to align values with verifiable action. It’s a reminder that sustainability is something that can be measured, proven, and improved upon.

Knowing where our packaging comes from isn’t just about compliance. It’s about integrity and accountability, about running a business that truly understands what it’s selling and where its products come from.

Read more:
The EUDR: A Challenge and an Opportunity for Small Sustainable Businesses

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, integrity is “the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.” In theory, it’s a simple word. But in the workplace, it can be one of the hardest qualities to sustain – especially in leadership.

Between urgent decisions, conflicting priorities and day-to-day pressures, how do leaders stay true to their values? How do they balance what’s easy with what’s right – and make integrity part of everyday operations?

At Chubb Fire & Security, integrity is one of our core values. In fact, it’s built into the way we lead. “Win with integrity, together” is one of five guiding principles that shape how we show up for our customers, our colleagues and our communities.

For SME leaders, leading with integrity is more than a personal virtue; it’s a business strategy. Done well, it builds trust, strengthens culture and creates the conditions where teams and businesses thrive.

Why Integrity Matters in Business

When we think of integrity, we often think of character. But in business, integrity has real commercial consequences – for performance, reputation, and resilience.

A 2023 Forbes article1 put it this way: “Integrity is not just a moral compass. It’s a business differentiator.” It fosters trust, credibility and long-term loyalty – all qualities that are essential in high-pressure leadership roles and entrepreneurial environments.

For SMEs in particular, trust is currency. With smaller teams and closer customer relationships, any lapse in integrity is felt more quickly – and often more personally – than in a larger organisation.

Integrity creates consistency. It sets the tone for how people interact, how decisions are made, and how conflict is handled. And when employees trust their leaders to be honest and fair, they’re more likely to stay, engage and give their best.

Chubb’s Approach: Leading with Values Every Day

At Chubb, integrity isn’t a leadership style. It’s part of our culture.

Our value “Win with integrity, together” is more than words on a wall. It shows up in how we collaborate, how we make decisions, and how we empower one another to perform at our best – together.

This is part of our wider philosophy of Building Great Leaders – a belief that everyone is a leader, and everyone deserves a great leader. That means creating an environment where people feel safe to speak up, take accountability and make decisions with confidence.

We don’t expect perfection. But we do expect people to own what they do, think steps ahead and lead with integrity at every level.

Four Ways SME Leaders Can Lead with Integrity

You don’t need a corporate handbook or a values committee to lead with integrity. In fact, the most powerful displays of integrity often happen in the small, everyday moments.

Here are four ways SME leaders can put integrity into practice:

Be Honest, Even When It’s Uncomfortable

Integrity starts with honesty, especially when delivering difficult news or admitting you don’t have all the answers. Avoid overpromising. Communicate with transparency and keep your commitments. If plans change, explain why.

Lead by Example, Not Just Instruction

People follow what leaders do, not just what they say. Your daily behaviour sets the tone for the team. If you expect accountability, model it. If you value collaboration, be seen doing it.

Apply Standards Consistently

One of the quickest ways to erode trust is by making exceptions, especially for senior leaders or long-standing employees. Ensure your rules, policies and recognition are applied fairly. Integrity is about doing the right thing, even when it’s inconvenient.

Welcome Challenge and Invite Feedback

Integrity isn’t about always being right. It’s about being open to feedback and willing to act on it. Create a culture where employees can raise concerns or offer ideas without fear. Then show that their voices lead to action.

How Integrity Strengthens Trust and Culture

Culture is shaped by what leaders reward, tolerate and ignore. If leaders cut corners, others will follow. But when leaders consistently act with integrity (owning mistakes, communicating honestly, and acting fairly) it creates psychological safety and strengthens team cohesion.

For SMEs, where people work closely and often wear multiple hats, this sense of trust is critical. It makes teams more resilient, more collaborative and more loyal.

At Chubb, we’ve seen this first-hand. Leaders who model our values create stronger teams – not just in output, but in how people feel about their work. When integrity is lived, not just talked about, it becomes part of the company’s DNA.

The Bottom Line

Integrity is one of the most powerful qualities a leader can have – and one of the most visible. People notice when leaders show up consistently, tell the truth, admit mistakes and make decisions based on shared values.

For SMEs, leading with integrity builds more than a good reputation. It builds trust, attracts talent and creates long-term cultural strength.

At Chubb, integrity is how we work together, with purpose and accountability. Because when leaders lead with integrity, they don’t just win. They bring others with them.

Read more:
How Leaders Build Trust by Leading with Integrity

Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not usually in the business of tutting at shoes. I’m not the keeper of the brogue, nor the patron saint of patent leather.

But when a man hosts a dinner at his own three-Michelin-starred restaurant to celebrate the newly knighted Sir David Beckham, and turns up in a tuxedo paired with gleaming white trainers — well, I start to wonder if the world hasn’t finally gone mad.

Now, of course, Gordon Ramsay owns the place. If anyone can decide the dress code at a table of his own, it’s the chef-proprietor himself. He can serve pigeon in a paddling pool and wear pyjamas if he likes. But ownership doesn’t equal immunity from taste. There’s a line between “relaxed contemporary cool” and “I’ve given up”. And I’m afraid, Gordon, that night you were teetering perilously close to the latter — in trainers, no less.

What made the spectacle even starker was the company. This wasn’t a boozy mates-only dinner down the King’s Road. It was a black-tie celebration for Beckham’s knighthood — the culmination of a decades-long campaign of service, brand management and quiet self-reinvention. And Sir David, to his eternal credit, turned up looking like a walking Bond franchise: the tux razor-sharp, the shoes mirror-bright, posture immaculate. Even, the now Lady Victoria, never knowingly underdressed, embodied old-school grace. Around the table, guests glimmered in black and silk, the dining room itself a temple of fine formality. Then there was Gordon,  beaming proudly, I’m sure for pone of his closest friends, but looking as if he’d dashed straight from the pass to the party without time to lace up.

Let’s not kid ourselves: trainers with a tux aren’t a bold fashion statement anymore. They’re the lazy man’s rebellion, the sartorial equivalent of mumbling at a job interview. Once upon a time, it was rock stars and artists who broke the rules; now it’s millionaires pretending to be effortless. And in the hallowed dining room of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, where the sauces are reduced to the millisecond and the tablecloths are ironed flatter than the M25, that nonchalance rings hollow.

There’s an old idea that what you wear to dinner says something about how seriously you take the company you’re in. Dress up for the people you respect. Make an effort for the moment. And when that moment is the knighthood of one of Britain’s most famous men, perhaps a pair of Oxfords wouldn’t kill you. Beckham understood that instinctively. Ramsay, alas, looked like he’d mistaken “three-star” for “street-food pop-up”.

I’m not saying we should all resurrect the tailcoat. God knows no one needs more starch in their life. But some occasions, and this was one, still deserve their sense of ceremony. A knighthood isn’t just a social media milestone. It’s the country tipping its hat to a lifetime of excellence, captaining of England, his involvement in the 2012 London Olympics and numerous charities including His Majesty’s Kings Trust (formerly the Princes Trust). The dinner that follows should match that spirit of reverence. If the chef-host can’t be bothered to put on proper shoes, why should anyone else bother to polish their manners?

Of course, Ramsay might argue that he’s a man of modern tastes, that the Michelin world needs loosening up, that formality is for dinosaurs. Maybe. But there’s a world of difference between evolution and erosion. When everything becomes casual, nothing feels special. And part of the allure of fine dining — and indeed of honours, titles, rituals — is that they are special. That they demand something extra of us. A little theatre. A little respect. A little polish.

The irony is that Ramsay, of all people, understands precision. His entire empire is built on it — on the poise of a sauce, the placement of a garnish, the glint of a knife. He’ll bark at a chef for an overcooked scallop, but when it comes to footwear, apparently anything goes. Perhaps he thought the trainers were a cheeky modern touch, a wink to contemporary cool. But against the tableau of gleaming glassware, bow-tied guests and Beckham’s effortless suavity, it just looked … off. Like ketchup on foie gras.

Then again, maybe that’s the point. Maybe Ramsay wanted to telegraph that fine dining is evolving — that even at its summit, the rules are ready to bend. But there’s a danger in bending them too far. Because when even the guardians of refinement decide that effort is optional, the very idea of “special” starts to crumble. And if there’s anywhere that should still demand a bit of theatre,  a bit of occasion,  it’s the dining room of a three-star restaurant celebrating a newly minted knight of the realm.

In the end, this isn’t really about shoes. It’s about symbolism. The Michelin stars, the knighthood, the restaurant, the clothes, all of it speaks a shared language of aspiration. And in that language, trainers say something else entirely. They say: I don’t care that much. And perhaps that’s fine if you’re catching a flight or popping to Waitrose. But when you’re toasting Sir David Beckham under chandeliers, it feels just a bit … cheap.

So, Gordon — you own the restaurant, the name, and the night. But sometimes ownership carries responsibility. And on this occasion, when everyone else rose to meet the grandeur of the moment, your shoes let the side down. The food was I am sure was flawless, the wine divine, the conversation sparkling. But those trainers? They were the only thing in the room that didn’t quite fit.

Read more:
Sorry Gordon, whilst you own the restaurant, but trainers with a tux? really?

It’s a curious thing, this sense of waiting for a Budget. For most, it’s an exercise in mild anxiety – a check to see whether wine duty is up again or whether you can still afford to fill the tank. But for business owners in London right now, the wait for Rachel Reeves’ first full Budget on 26 November feels less like a nervous twitch and more like a death row countdown.

Charlie Gilkes, who co-founded Inception Group and runs some of London’s most imaginative bars – Mr Fogg’s, Bunga Bunga, the kind of places where post-pandemic optimism briefly came alive again – summed it up with alarming accuracy: “It feels like waiting on death row, waiting until the very last moment to let us know whether she will grant a stay of execution.”

And you can see his point. Reeves’ Budget, which has been rescheduled, delayed, and wrapped in more mystery than a Bond villain’s plot, is arriving under the kind of cloud that usually means someone’s about to pay – and it’ll probably be London.

For weeks now, the rumours have been circulating through Westminster corridors like wasps around a picnic: a wealth tax here, a mansion tax there, a shake-up of partnerships, a business rates “super multiplier”. Each idea lands like another nail being gently tapped into the coffin of the capital’s competitiveness.

The problem is not that the government wants to raise money – everyone knows the country’s finances look like a student overdraft in week one of term. The problem is who they’re going to shake down to do it. Because when politicians say “we all need to contribute,” what they often mean is “London can pay.”

Let’s put this in perspective. London generates £618 billion a year in GDP – roughly 22 per cent of the UK total. Add the South East, and you’re close to half. The capital and its surrounds contribute nearly 30 per cent of all income tax and more than 30 per cent of business rates. It’s the engine room of the UK economy, the bit that keeps the lights on while politicians from every party take turns kicking it in the shins.

And yet, Reeves’ team seem ready to push through reforms that will disproportionately batter the capital’s businesses. The “super multiplier” for properties with rateable values over £500,000 – a neat way of saying “we’ll tax your London office more because it looks expensive” – could mean rates as high as 58p in the pound.

To call that punitive would be an understatement. It’s an electric shock to every business with a W1 postcode. It doesn’t matter that these companies are already shelling out eye-watering sums for rent, staffing and utilities – the Treasury still wants its slice, preferably before the till opens.

David Jones of Avison Young pointed out the obvious but crucial truth: business rates are a direct overhead. They don’t come out of profit; they come out of existence. You pay them whether you’re making money or not. It’s the fiscal equivalent of being asked to chip in for your own executioner’s new axe.

And then there’s the wealth tax carousel. Reeves’ team is said to be looking at removing the capital gains exemption on homes worth more than £1.5 million. That might sound like it targets the super-rich, but in London that’s not a mansion – it’s a family home with a kitchen extension and a decent postcode. Roughly 11 per cent of London properties sit above that threshold, compared to 2 per cent elsewhere.

James Evans of Douglas & Gordon hit the nail on the head: “In many neighbourhoods, £1.5 million is far from a mansion.” Quite. It’s a three-bed terrace in Clapham with peeling paintwork and a leaking skylight. If that’s “wealth,” then Britain’s definition of luxury needs a serious reality check.

Add to that the possible 1 per cent annual levy on homes over £2 million, and you’ve got a policy cocktail that would make even Mr Fogg wince. These aren’t just taxes; they’re deterrents – neon signs flashing “London: Closed for Business” to anyone thinking of investing, relocating, or even staying put.

And let’s not forget the white-collar crowd. Reeves is reportedly eyeing changes to how partnership income is taxed, which could hit the capital’s law firms and consultancies squarely in the solar plexus. Partners who earn seven figures might not be your first sympathy vote, but when they leave – and they will leave, because Dubai, New York and Singapore all smile more kindly on their tax codes – the ripple effect will hit everything from sandwich shops to spin studios.

Charlie Gilkes isn’t just speaking for himself. He’s speaking for a city that’s been through hell these past few years – from lockdowns that gutted hospitality to staffing crises, inflation, rent hikes and endless policy tinkering. What London needs is stability, predictability, a sense that the rules won’t be rewritten every six months. What it’s getting instead is a Treasury that seems to view its success as a problem to be solved.

It’s a funny kind of masochism that defines our politics: punish the productive, milk the metropolitan, and then act surprised when the rest of the country runs dry.

London doesn’t want special treatment. It just wants recognition that when you squeeze the capital, the whole of Britain feels the pressure. The trains built in Derby, the fabrics woven in Huddersfield, the wine poured in Soho – they’re all part of the same chain. Cut off the top, and the bottom collapses.

So yes, as Reeves sharpens her red pen and business owners sit counting the days until the 26th, it does feel like waiting on death row. But perhaps, just perhaps, the Chancellor will look up at the gallows, take a deep breath, and decide that execution isn’t quite the growth strategy Britain needs right now.

Until then, we wait – strapped in, chin up, praying for a last-minute reprieve.

Read more:
Waiting on Reeves: London entrepreneurs face the gallows

When I founded Invicta Vita, I knew that building an exceptional team would be the cornerstone of our success. What I didn’t anticipate was how fundamentally my thinking about hiring would evolve.

Today, I find myself challenging the very assumptions that once guided my recruitment decisions, particularly around age and career stage. The question that now drives our approach is simple yet profound: what truly matters when building teams for tomorrow’s challenges?

The traditional hiring playbook has long favoured a predictable trajectory. Fresh graduates for energy and moldability. Mid-career professionals for immediate expertise. Senior hires for leadership. It’s neat, linear, and increasingly obsolete. In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, this conventional wisdom isn’t just limiting, it’s leaving extraordinary talent untapped and organisations vulnerable to the very disruption they claim to be preparing for.

Yet we’re facing a paradox that should alarm every business leader: thousands of highly skilled graduates remain unemployed or underemployed, their potential squandered whilst organisations complain about talent shortages. We’re failing an entire generation of talented individuals who have invested years in their education, often accruing significant debt, only to find doors closed because they lack “experience.” This isn’t just a social issue, it’s an economic imperative and a missed opportunity of staggering proportions.

The case for graduates has never been stronger. Beyond their digital fluency and fresh perspectives, they represent untapped potential at a critical moment. They enter organisations without preconceived notions about “how things should be done.” They question legacy processes not from cynicism but from genuine curiosity. When paired with experienced mentors, this questioning becomes a catalyst for innovation rather than disruption for its own sake. I’ve watched graduate hires identify inefficiencies that seasoned team members had long stopped noticing, simply because they approached problems with fresh eyes.

Moreover, today’s graduates bring capabilities that previous generations simply didn’t possess. They’re conversant with AI tools, comfortable with rapid technological change, and often possess a global perspective shaped by diverse educational experiences and digital connectivity. They understand emerging consumer behaviours because they are those consumers. Dismissing this insight because it comes wrapped in inexperience is strategic shortsightedness.

We also have a responsibility here that extends beyond business advantage. Every graduate we employ becomes a taxpayer, a consumer, and a contributor to economic growth. Every graduate we overlook risks becoming disillusioned, their skills atrophying, their potential diminishing. The social and economic cost of a lost generation of talent cannot be overstated. As business leaders, we have both the power and the obligation to break this cycle.

I’ve witnessed this firsthand at Invicta Vita. Some of our most innovative solutions have come from graduate hires working alongside career changers who brought unconventional perspectives to familiar problems. Our most adaptable team members have included fresh graduates who absorbed new methodologies instantly, as well as professionals in their fifties who embraced new technologies with enthusiasm that surprised even themselves. Meanwhile, we’ve seen recent graduates demonstrate strategic thinking that belied their years. These experiences have taught me that the intersection of diverse experiences, ages, and career stages isn’t just beneficial, it’s essential for organisational resilience.

Career changers represent another underutilised talent pool worth championing. These individuals have made conscious decisions to redirect their professional lives, often at considerable personal cost. What they bring isn’t just transferable skills, it’s proven adaptability, risk tolerance, and a hunger to learn that can’t be taught. I’ve seen former teachers become exceptional project managers, their classroom experience translating seamlessly into stakeholder management.

Midlife hires deserve particular attention because they challenge our most persistent biases. The notion that professionals over forty-five are somehow less adaptable or tech-savvy is not just offensive, it’s demonstrably false. What this demographic offers is invaluable: pattern recognition across economic cycles, emotional intelligence honed through decades of complex relationships, and often a level of commitment unencumbered by the early-career job-hopping that characterises younger cohorts. They’ve seen trends come and go, giving them the perspective to distinguish genuine transformation from passing fads.

The real magic happens when these groups work together. Intergenerational teams create a dynamic where learning becomes multidirectional. Graduate hires reverse-mentor senior colleagues on emerging technologies and digital trends. Experienced professionals provide context that prevents reinventing wheels or repeating historical mistakes. Career changers ask the outsider questions that challenge groupthink. This cognitive diversity isn’t merely nice to have, research consistently shows it drives better decision-making and innovation.

Building such teams requires intentional effort. Job descriptions must focus on capabilities and potential rather than arbitrary years of experience. Interview processes need to assess learning agility, problem-solving approaches, and cultural alignment rather than checking boxes against predetermined career paths. We’ve moved toward skills-based assessments that reveal how candidates think rather than simply what they know. For graduates especially, we look for curiosity, resilience, and the ability to collaborate, qualities that predict success far better than prior work experience.

Creating an inclusive environment for diverse career stages also demands attention to organisational culture. Flexible working arrangements matter differently across life stages. Graduates might value structured learning opportunities and mentorship programmes, while midlife professionals might prioritise work-life integration. Career development can’t follow a one-size-fits-all model when team members have vastly different starting points and aspirations.

The business case extends beyond innovation and adaptability. Organisations that embrace age and stage diversity position themselves to better understand and serve diverse customer bases. They build succession planning resilience by avoiding the cliff-edge risk of cohort retirement. They enhance their employer brand in markets where talent scarcity increasingly trumps talent selection. And by giving graduates that crucial first opportunity, we create loyalty and shape professionals who will drive our industries forward for decades to come.

Looking ahead, the organisations that will thrive aren’t those with the youngest teams, the most experienced teams, or even the most credentialed teams. They’ll be the ones that recognise talent as a mosaic rather than a monolith. The future belongs to businesses brave enough to look beyond the CV’s chronology and see the capabilities, curiosity, and commitment that transcend age and stage. It belongs to those willing to invest in graduates when they need us most.

The question isn’t whether you can afford to embrace this diversity in hiring. It’s whether you can afford not to.

Read more:
Why we must give graduates a chance: Building teams that blend youth with experience

Television dramas have long had a fascination with the legal world. From Rumpole of the Bailey and Kavanagh QC to Silk, The Split, and perhaps most memorably This Life, the profession is often portrayed as a chaotic cocktail of high-stakes cases, late nights, tortured personal relationships, and constant ethical dilemmas.

These portrayals capture the emotional intensity that legal work can bring, but they also create myths. The truth is often more grounded and, importantly for new lawyers and business leaders alike, more sustainable.

This Life and the Truth About Starting Out

Of all the legal dramas, This Life made one of the deepest cultural impressions, particularly on a generation of lawyers entering the profession. First aired in the mid-1990s, the series followed five young solicitors starting their careers while navigating messy relationships, self-doubt, and ambition.

What it got right was the emotional uncertainty that can accompany those early years: the pressure to learn quickly, adapt fast, and prove yourself. But it also portrayed a version of law that was relentless and all-consuming, which doesn’t have to be the case.

Many regional law firms today offer a more measured introduction. Junior lawyers are supported with manageable caseloads, mentoring, and time to grow. It’s possible to start your legal career with balance, not burnout.

My Legal Journey — and the Choice to Work Differently

I grew up in the Cotswolds and trained at BPP Law School in London before qualifying at a London firm. While the experience gave me a strong technical grounding, I realised early on that I wanted a career with more balance. One that wouldn’t demand I sacrifice wellbeing or family life.

I later joined Goughs, a regional firm where I could work on complex legal matters while living in the countryside and raising a family. Over time, I’ve progressed to Partner level, focused on private wealth and estate planning. Work that’s intellectually challenging, commercially significant, and invariably emotionally sensitive.

That level of progression simply wouldn’t have been possible in a large City firm. In many big practices, hierarchy can be rigid, and client access is heavily restricted in the early years. Instead, I was trusted early on with complex matters, encouraged to develop commercial instincts, and supported by senior colleagues who genuinely invested in my growth. It accelerated both my experience and my confidence — not exhaustion.

My work focuses on complex wills, wealth preservation, tax mitigation, estate planning, and agricultural estate matters, often advising high-net-worth individuals on intricate, multi-generational issues. This is serious legal work, with national significance, often encountering emotional weight. Many of the clients I work with have long-standing relationships with the firm, in some cases spanning generations. Families and businesses return to seek advice across many areas of law, from land and property to succession planning, family arrangements, and trusts. That kind of continuity reflects trust and the importance of getting it right over time.

A Career Built for Balance

Where you choose to work shapes more than just your career — it influences your wellbeing, your values, and your long-term resilience. I work hard, but not at the expense of what matters most. I have time with my young children, time outdoors in a natural, healthy environment, and space to decompress and reflect.

This lifestyle brings clarity, energy, and perspective, the opposite of the stress and fragmentation that often comes with city living. It’s a life I’ve chosen intentionally, and one that Goughs has supported every step of the way.

The Role of Meditation in Professional Resilience

Meditation is another essential tenet of my daily life, and one that I believe plays a powerful role in long-term professional resilience. I practise Transcendental Meditation (TM), a method developed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and more recently championed by film director David Lynch.

Each day, I rise at 5am and begin with Wim Hof breathing exercises, followed by 20 minutes of TM. I repeat the practice again in the evening, creating two points of stillness and clarity within otherwise busy days. In TM, a mantra is used to maintain focus and presence during meditation. This practice fills me with calmness, confidence, and self-assurance, qualities that are vital in legal work, especially when navigating emotionally charged or high-value matters.

I was introduced to TM by my father-in-law, a very senior business leader who attributes much of his success to the discipline and clarity meditation brought him. It’s a practice that I believe has immense potential within the professional world. TM trainers offer corporate programmes, and I think workplaces should consider meditation not as a ‘wellness perk’ but as a strategic investment in performance and resilience.

Lessons for Business Leaders: Managing Pressure Without Sacrificing People

The pressures commonly associated with the legal profession—such as long hours, high expectations, and complex client dynamics—are not unique to our sector. Many business leaders will recognise the same stress points in their own teams.

Three patterns in particular that stand out and need to be mitigated are:

• Burnout: Professionals juggling deadlines, client demands, and performance metrics often push too far, for too long.
• Perfectionism: The need for precision, particularly in regulated sectors, can create a culture of anxiety and overworking.
• Imposter Syndrome: Even high-performing individuals can struggle with self-doubt, a silent but potent source of stress.

These issues aren’t inevitable. They can be designed to be prevented with the right culture and leadership.

What Healthy Culture Looks Like

In my experience, people thrive when mental health is taken seriously, not as an add-on, but as a core part of how the organisation functions. That means having systems, support, and leadership that recognises people as people, not just productivity units.

When wellbeing is embedded, not performative, it builds trust. That trust shows up in better retention, stronger teams, and more open conversations.

What the Modern Law Firm Can Teach Every Business

Whether you’re running a legal team, a creative agency, or a tech startup, the modern workplace requires smarter leadership. Here are four takeaways from how the legal profession is evolving:

• Prioritise structure and culture over optics
  Don’t be fooled by appearances — the slickest offices or biggest names don’t always deliver the best outcomes, for staff or clients. Sustainable performance comes from clarity, fairness, and internal trust.
• Normalise mental health conversations
  Don’t wait for a crisis. Invest in systems, people, and leadership practices that keep wellbeing on the radar every day. Cultural change starts with consistent visibility, not one-off gestures.
• Reward people based on impact, not hours
  Clients don’t care how long someone sat at their desk; they care whether their problem was solved. Smart leaders measure outcomes, not presenteeism.
• Encourage autonomy
  People do their best work when trusted to shape their careers and manage their own balance. The most resilient professionals aren’t micromanaged; they’re supported and empowered.

Advice to New Lawyers or Anyone Starting Out or Again

Whether you’re qualifying into law, changing sectors, starting a new business, or just beginning your career, remember: your environment matters.

Look for a workplace or make sure to develop a workplace that:

• Supports your development through structure and mentorship
• Values wellbeing alongside performance
• Encourages balance rather than celebrating burnout
• Invests in you as a whole person, not just your hours

You don’t have to replicate This Life’s chaos to succeed in law, or any profession.

Phillip Bolton is a Partner at Goughs Solicitors, Head of the Private Wealth Team, Deputy Head of the Private Client Department, and leads the firm’s Corsham office. He is a Legal 500–recommended lawyer with a focus on complex wealth, estate, and tax planning for high-net-worth individuals and family businesses.

Read more:
From This Life to The Split: rethinking the lawyer’s life – beyond courtroom portrayals

It’s not often you see a supermarket make national news for not letting someone work for free. Usually the outrage runs in the other direction—“greedy corporations exploiting unpaid labour” and so on.

But today’s piece in The Telegraph about Waitrose and Tom Boyd, a 27-year-old man with severe autism, has managed to flip that script entirely. And in doing so, it has revealed something rather telling about the way big companies like to wrap themselves in the language of “inclusion” while quietly stripping the humanity out of it.

Tom, by all accounts, was a model volunteer. For four years, nine hours a week, he stacked shelves at the Cheadle Hulme branch. He turned up on time, was loved by staff, and—most importantly—he belonged. His mum, Frances, says he’d given more than six hundred hours of his life to that store. That’s not a “trial shift” or a “placement”. That’s a commitment longer than most marriages. And then, the moment she dared ask if he could be paid, Waitrose said no, and shut the whole thing down.

Now, if you’ve ever dealt with a big corporate HR department, you can almost hear the cogs whirring. Alarm bells, legal risk, safeguarding, health and safety. Someone in Bracknell probably got a “risk alert” email saying “URGENT: volunteer exceeding hours threshold, potential classification as employee.” So they did what corporates always do when confronted with something messy, human and potentially emotional: they pulled the plug.

This, I think, is what people mean when they talk about “the system”. It’s not some faceless cabal—it’s a spreadsheet somewhere, with a column that says “non-employees doing employee work = bad optics.” It’s the reflexive desire to tidy away anything that doesn’t fit the model. And in doing so, they managed to break the heart of a man who, according to his mother, only ever wanted to contribute—to belong.

Waitrose insists it’s investigating. They issue the usual boilerplate: “We work hard to be an inclusive employer… we partner with charities… we make reasonable adjustments…” All very fine. But if you need a PR statement to convince people you’re kind, you’ve already lost.

A Question of Value

The uncomfortable truth is that Tom Boyd was doing exactly what the supermarket assistant job description says: keeping the shelves full, products in the right place, the aisles tidy. The difference is that he wasn’t getting £12.40 an hour for it. He wasn’t even asking for that—his family said they’d accept two hours a week of paid work. Just something. Recognition. A sense that his contribution mattered.

But Waitrose couldn’t find room for that in the model. Apparently, you can sell “Essential Waitrose” beans at £1.20 but can’t accommodate an autistic man who’s been giving you free labour for years.

The irony is painful. In an age where every corporate press release bangs on about diversity, equity and inclusion, here’s a man who lived the spirit of inclusion far more genuinely than any policy ever could. He didn’t need a “neurodiversity awareness” training session; he needed a job. And the company, instead of seeing an opportunity to make good on its lofty slogans, treated him like a potential liability.

Waitrose isn’t uniquely wicked here. This is modern corporate Britain all over: risk-averse, image-obsessed, allergic to emotion. Somewhere along the way, kindness got corporatised. It’s been turned into a metric, a compliance box. “Inclusion” is a PowerPoint slide. “Compassion” is a campaign hashtag. And when an actual human being like Tom comes along—real, awkward, imperfect—they don’t know what to do with him.

So they hide behind “process”. They quote “policy”. And they convince themselves that they’re doing the right thing because the equality legislation file says so. The result? A man who once found purpose in stacking tins of tomatoes now sits at home, bewildered, while the store he loved continues to peddle organic quinoa and ethical olive oil under the banner of good living.

It didn’t have to be like this. Imagine the alternative headline: “Waitrose creates first supported employment role for man with autism.” Imagine the PR gold. The viral posts. The outpouring of goodwill. A small, practical act of inclusion, instead of the cold bureaucratic one we got.

I used to be associated with the UK’s first new-build dedicated school for children and young adults on the Autism spectrum, so I speak with experience when I say that there was a dozen different ways that Waitrose could have handled this and the way that they have just does not hold a candle to their so-called John Lewis Partnership, ‘partner’ benefits, which does include such things as paid parental leave and support for working families.

They could have given Tom a badge. A payslip. A Christmas card signed by the team. They could have said: “Tom, you’re one of us.” Instead, they told his mum the store was being “cleaned” so he wouldn’t be upset when they sent him away. The cruelty of that euphemism—“cleaned”—is almost Dickensian. It’s the kind of lie you tell a child about a dead pet.

This story touches something deeper than corporate policy. It’s about the meaning of work itself. For many of us, a job isn’t just about money. It’s about structure, community, identity. For someone like Tom, that’s magnified a hundredfold. The act of showing up, being useful, being part of something—that’s dignity. And we’ve built a world where that sort of quiet dignity has no line on the balance sheet.

Frances Boyd’s heartbreak is palpable not because her son was denied pay, but because he was denied belonging. She knows that his “limited language” doesn’t mean limited feeling. She knows how much it mattered to him to have colleagues, a uniform, a role. And she knows that behind the green aprons and organic lemons, there’s a company that forgot what kindness looks like when it isn’t printed on a marketing brochure.

I don’t think Waitrose meant harm. That’s the saddest part. They thought they were doing the “proper thing.” The compliant thing. But doing the proper thing isn’t always doing the right thing. Sometimes decency requires bending a rule, writing a small cheque, taking a risk.

They told The Telegraph: “We are sorry to hear of Tom’s story, and whilst we cannot comment on individual cases, we are investigating as a priority.”

Tom Boyd’s story is a reminder that business isn’t about policies—it’s about people. It’s about the small acts that don’t make the quarterly report but define a company’s soul. Waitrose, for all its premium polish and “inclusive employer” copywriting, has shown us what happens when compassion meets compliance—and compliance wins.

If this is what “doing the right thing” looks like in 2025, maybe we all need to ask whether the moral till’s coming up short.

Read more:
Waitrose’s kindness gap: how a supermarket lost its humanity

It was one of those small domestic moments that tells you everything you need to know about the modern British service industry. I was visiting my parents, both octogenarians, both long past the stage of bothering to shop around for anything,  when an envelope from the AA thudded onto the doormat. My mother opened it with the slight suspicion that all letters now require, only to find the annual renewal notice for their breakdown cover.

“Two hundred and sixty pounds thirty-eight,” she said, frowning at the figure as if it were a medical diagnosis. “Though that’s apparently cheaper than last year – it was £280.25 – and they’ve given us a discount of £107.25.” She seemed reassured, which is precisely how the AA likes it.

Then my eye caught a line in bold type: ‘Thank you for your 64 years of loyalty’.

Sixty-four years! That’s longer than most marriages, and certainly longer than any of the call centre staff at AA Insurance have been alive. My stepfather has been a paying customer since the Beatles were still playing in Hamburg. If loyalty were a virtue the AA truly valued, he’d have a gold card, a free tow truck, and a man in a yellow jacket stationed permanently outside the house.

But no. The letter was a masterpiece of corporate doublespeak – a thank you note wrapped around a quiet mugging. £260.38 for a service that, as it turns out, could be had for a third of the price if you knew where to look.

Being the dutiful son (and, frankly, unable to resist a little consumer sleuthing), I fired up the laptop. Three minutes on the AA’s own website later, I had a quote for exactly the same cover: £97.64. “Introductory offer,” it said. “Full price £162.43.”

So, £97.64 for a new member, or £260.38 for a customer of sixty-four years. You don’t need a degree in behavioural economics to see what’s going on here. The so-called “discount” on the renewal was a magician’s trick: look at this £107 off! – while your wallet quietly disappears.

It’s a swindle dressed in the polite language of British customer service. And my parents, like so many others of their generation, would have paid it. Because that’s what loyal customers do. They trust. They assume that six decades of prompt payment and polite correspondence entitles them to fairness. But in the world of modern subscriptions and annual renewals, loyalty isn’t rewarded, it’s monetised.

The British have always had a sentimental attachment to loyalty. We like to think that staying with the same insurer, bank or utility company means something. It’s a vestige of that post-war mindset where you had your man from the Pru, your chap at the bank, and your account with the AA. You stuck with them and they looked after you.

But that social contract has long since been ripped up. Today, loyalty is treated as a sign of weakness. Companies like the AA rely on inertia,  on the quiet assumption that most customers, especially the elderly, will simply renew whatever number appears on the letter.

Meanwhile, the marketing department pours its energy into wooing the new, the fickle, the flighty, those who’ll take their “introductory discount” for a year, cancel at renewal, and start again under another email address. The whole business model has become a revolving door of introductory offers and loyalty penalties.

It’s not just the AA, of course. Every industry plays the same game. Broadband providers, insurers, even the streaming platforms. The longer you stay, the more you pay. It’s a perverse inversion of what loyalty once meant. It’s like being charged extra for ordering the same pint every night at your local.

What’s really galling is how clever it all is. The renewal letters are written to sound reassuring, trustworthy, a little paternal even. They thank you for your custom, list your “discounts”, and refer vaguely to “enhanced cover” you probably never asked for. They hope you’ll glance at the total, shrug, and write the cheque.

In my parents’ case, it was only luck, or filial nosiness, that stopped them being charged nearly triple what the policy was worth. And there’s something morally wrong about that. It’s one thing to overcharge the inattentive; quite another to quietly exploit a generation that built your business in the first place.

Imagine if the AA sent out a letter saying: “Dear Mr X, as one of our longest-standing members, we’re delighted to offer you the same price we give to new customers.” Now that would be loyalty. But of course, that would mean voluntarily surrendering profit. And in the boardroom logic of today’s Britain, that’s heresy.

There’s a wider moral here for all businesses, especially those that like to boast about their heritage. True loyalty is built on mutual respect, not on tricking your oldest customers into overpaying.

We’re entering an era where trust is the scarcest commodity. Consumers are savvier, angrier, and far less forgiving than they used to be. Social media ensures that one story of a pensioner being overcharged can go viral in hours. And yet, the temptation to milk existing customers remains irresistible – it’s easy revenue, and it rarely makes the news.

But brands that behave this way are mortgaging their reputation for short-term gain. Because once people cotton on, as they inevitably do, the damage is irreversible. Sixty-four years of loyalty can vanish in sixty-four seconds.

In the end, I cancelled my parents’ renewal and signed them up anew. The process took less time than boiling the kettle. My mother was delighted. My stepfather, ever the gentleman, just shook his head. “So much for loyalty,” he said.

Quite. The AA may get them back on the road when the car breaks down, but when it comes to customer loyalty, it’s the company itself that’s stranded on the hard shoulder – hazard lights flashing, engine sputtering, wondering where all its good will went.

We asked the AA for a response and an AA spokesperson said: “Our pricing reflects the service offered. The new member price is discounted, but doesn’t provide the same member benefits.

“We would welcome the chance to talk to this member to look at their renewal and see what they are comparing it to online.” My response to  this, is sorry AA, but it is exactly the same service for exactly three times the cost.

Read more:
The AA’s loyalty problem: sixty-four years and still taken for a ride

Autumn marks the start of festive corporate event season – that time of year when work calendars often up with the usual ‘team building’ rituals: pub lunches, karaoke nights and overly facilitated icebreakers.

These may tick the social box but do they foster genuine connections between colleagues?

For many, they feel more like obligations rather than opportunities to build real connections with colleagues.

The limits of traditional team-building

It’s a familiar challenge for organisers: how can teams build meaningful relationships without falling back on tired traditions? Often conventional team socials miss the mark:

• A recent Financial Times survey found fewer than 25% of UK workers actually want alcohol at work-social events.
• Timing, travel and family commitments often prevent employees from participating.
• Forced fun doesn’t build real relationships and can leave colleagues feeling excluded or disengaged.

These limitations have prompted organisations to look for alternative approaches that genuinely engage everyone, rather than ticking a box on the calendar.

 The rise of shared adventures

Game-based, adventure-style activities are increasingly popular because they remove the forced ice-breakers and instead encourage natural engagement. Examples include scavenger hunts, problem-solving challenges and city-wide adventure games.

For the Celebrity Traitors fans out there, a recent example of teamwork and discovering your team mates’ hidden strengths was Nick Mohammed’s performance in the ‘Trojan Horse’ challenge. How quick was his puzzle solving?!

These adventure experiences:

• Encourage collaboration and communication
• Spark creativity and out-of-the-box thinking
• Are inclusive and accessible to all team members
• Let colleagues work together toward a shared goal

From my experience hosting StreetHunt Games events, I’ve seen colleagues who start out barely knowing each other (or having never met in person) form strong connections after 90-120 minutes of puzzle-solving and collaboration – helped along by a bit of friendly rivalry when pitted against other colleague teams. They quickly learn each other’s strengths and weaknesses, which can translate directly into better teamwork back in the office.

The most common feedback from organisers is that these types of games appeal across ages and job roles and achieve a level of engagement that traditional team socials often don’t.

‘We had a FANTASTIC time for our team event. The team has different age ranges and interests but everyone loved it. Great to bring the team together and we’re still talking about it a week later.’

The benefits of team building

Well-structured team-building activities offer a wide range of benefits, supported by research:

• Improved communication: 63% of leaders reported enhanced team communication after participating in team-building activities (BambooHR).
• Higher morale: 61% of leaders saw improvements in team morale (BambooHR).
• Increased motivation: Studies suggest up to 80% of employees feel more motivated when sharing a common mission with colleagues (DPG).
• Stronger social bonds: Gallup found that employees with a best friend at work are 50% more satisfied and seven times more likely to be engaged in their roles.
• Skill development: Problem-solving, creativity and leadership qualities are strengthened.
• Greater productivity: According to research from the University of Warwick, happiness makes people about 12% more productive.

Why adventure-based activities work

These activities combine novelty, exploration and challenge. They get teams out of the office and into environments that stimulate creative thinking and problem-solving. Unlike pub nights or karaoke, adventure-based activities:

• Don’t rely on alcohol or late-night participation
• Can be scaled for teams of any size
• Encourage natural leadership and peer-to-peer collaboration
• Create memorable experiences that foster real connections
• Leverages natural curiosity and competitive instincts, similar to popular TV challenge formats
• Encourages trust, collaboration and strategy in a safe, playful environment

Before you book your next social

Before planning your next corporate social, try to move away from the typical beer-‘o’clock events that can put some team members off. Instead, consider an activity that encourages exploration, collaboration and fun:

• Shared adventure games create stories and memories that last
• Teams naturally connect while problem-solving together
• Participation is inclusive, boosting engagement and satisfaction

Investing in these activities doesn’t just tick the box for having a team social. It builds a deeper connection within teams – turning colleagues into collaborators and friends.

Read more:
Why team adventures beat boardroom socials

Let’s get one thing straight: business is not an Olympic sport. No medals. No referees. No level playing field. It’s not drug-tested either, and you can forget about fair play.

The idea that commerce is some noble amateur pursuit where everyone lines up at the same starting line, toes behind the white paint, and waits for the gun is a comforting delusion. Out here, in the mud and chaos of modern busines, it’s survival of whoever’s got the better kit, the smarter coach, and the secret stash of performance enhancers that no-one else has worked out how to get hold of yet.

And right now, that secret stash is artificial intelligence.

There’s an enduring British fondness for the idea that if you just work hard, play fair, and put in the graft, you’ll win out in the end. Lovely in theory. Utterly laughable in practice. Anyone who’s ever tried to run a small business knows that it’s like trying to sprint uphill through treacle while Amazon and Apple whizz past on hoverboards powered by other people’s data.

The big players have teams of analysts, consultants, and developers all optimising every click, every purchase, every breath their customer takes. They’ve built their own Olympic training camps with altitude tents and nutritionists and shiny machines that make the rest of us look like we’re still using a fax.

And yet – here’s the twist – the gap is closing. Because, for once, the performance-enhancing substance that levels the field isn’t locked behind a corporate paywall. AI is available now, to everyone, and it’s legal, cheap, and astonishingly effective when used properly.

Think of AI not as the 12th man cheering from the sidelines, but as your 10th, 11th, 12th and 20th employee. The one who doesn’t need sleep, doesn’t call in sick, and doesn’t ask for a raise. The one who remembers everything, analyses faster than you can blink, and can spin out content, customer replies, financial models or product ideas while you’re still buttering your toast.

For years, the big breakthroughs were about infrastructure. Cloud computing cut costs and freed small firms from the tyranny of on-premise servers. SaaS platforms eliminated the need for entire IT departments. Suddenly you didn’t need a team of developers in a windowless room just to get a basic CRM running.

But AI? AI is the rocket fuel. The TNT. The caffeine shot to the jugular that lets a small business move like a giant. It’s the difference between a post-war racing car and a modern Formula 1 machine – both technically cars, yes, but one will still be cornering while the other’s already halfway round the next lap.

From Admin Assistant to Strategic Advisor

The beauty of AI is that it scales across everything. A café owner can use it to forecast demand and cut waste, while a marketing agency can generate entire campaign strategies before lunch. The accountant who once spent all night building spreadsheets now gets the same insight in five minutes flat.

And let’s be honest – the notion that AI will “replace” humans is the least interesting thing about it. Of course it will replace the dull bits. The repetitive, life-sucking admin that nobody misses. What matters is what you can do with the time and headspace it gives back.

You can serve customers better. Build faster. Think longer-term. Give a level of service the Dalai Lama would nod approvingly at, because your systems are actually listening to your clients instead of losing their emails in a spam folder.

There’s always a chorus of sceptics who say, “Oh, we’ll see how it pans out.” The same people who thought websites were a fad and email would never replace the fax. They talk about AI “maturing,” as if it’s a wine that’ll be better in five years. Newsflash: the people using it now will have built entirely new business models by the time you’re still swirling your glass and sniffing for notes of oak.

Small businesses that adopt AI today won’t just get more efficient – they’ll become more ambitious. The micro-brewery will start exporting. The artisan shop will go global. The consultant who once handled five clients can now manage fifty, because her virtual assistant is quietly doing the logistics while she focuses on the high-value work.

Of course, someone will object that it’s all a bit unfair – that using AI is like doping. But again, this isn’t sport. There’s no governing body, no World Anti-Doping Agency for the self-employed. Nobody’s taking your gold medal away because you used an algorithm to spot a trend before your rival did.

The ethics here aren’t about “cheating.” They’re about using every tool available to serve your customers, your team, and your sanity better. If your competitors are juicing up on automation, insight, and instant data while you insist on staying pure with spreadsheets and Post-it notes, that’s not moral integrity. That’s self-sabotage.

The great thing about this particular drug is that it rewards curiosity more than cash. You don’t need to be a billionaire to get started. Most AI tools cost less than a round of drinks and deliver a measurable return before you’ve finished the pint. The only barrier is the mindset that says, “This is for someone else.”

Use it to draft. To plan. To analyse. To dream bigger. Test, refine, repeat. The magic isn’t in the machine – it’s in what you do with it. But like any performance enhancer, it only works if you actually take it. Sitting there admiring the vial won’t win you the race.

So stop pretending business is a polite 400-metre jog. It’s a street fight. And if someone offers you a completely legal, side-effect-free, performance-enhanced boost that could turn your scrappy start-up into a medal contender – you’d be mad not to take it.

Because when the dust settles and the doors are blown clean off, the only question that matters will be: did you have the guts to take the shot?

Read more:
Business is not an Olympic sport, so invest today in that performance-enhanced boost