Getting down to business
This afternoon we are holding a Conservative Business Relations seminar looking at environmental strategy and UK business. It is going to be hugely well attended.
Yesterday George Osborne spoke at a City lunch with leading members of the accountancy profession.
In businesses of all sizes and sorts, there is now a desperation to get rid of this Government. It is the sheer incompetence on top of the burdens of regulations and taxation which is causing this.
But there is also a much greater realism. Of course they realise that we are increasingly uncompetitive, and that businesses continue to look abroad for a better environment. However they now realise how tied any new government will be, how restrained by the terrible fiscal legacy of this Government. Unravelling this will not be easy, and it cannot be done overnight, but they now appreciate how much more difficult it has become to achieve quickly the lower tax environment they all want.
Meanwhile we are listening very carefully to what they have to say. Their comments would not exactly please Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling who have jointly created this unhappy situation, and burdensome future legacy.