Taxation: The Silent Storm That Strangles Growth

In my last posts, I spoke about the Perfect Red Storm we are walking into, and the illusion of the £39 billion “affordable homes” pledge. Both are symptoms of a deeper issue: how government views taxation.

Tax, in principle, is meant to fund public services and infrastructure. But in practice, it has become a blunt instrument—used not to build prosperity, but to cover for short-term political mistakes. Instead of fostering enterprise, innovation, and wealth creation, the tax system punishes those who work, create, and invest, while subsidising inefficiency.

The reality is simple: governments don’t generate wealth—they spend it. And the more they spend, the more they expect hard-working individuals and businesses to carry the burden. In the property sector alone, we’ve seen layer upon layer of taxation—from stamp duty hikes to landlord levies—that have frozen mobility, restricted supply, and ultimately pushed costs onto tenants and buyers.

This is not just poor policy—it’s counterproductive. When you squeeze the very people and businesses that create value, you don’t get growth, you get stagnation. When you increase taxes in an economy already suffocated by debt, you don’t raise prosperity, you accelerate decline.

The challenge with the upcoming Autumn Budget is that it is being framed as reform, but the reality may well be yet another cycle of extraction—more ways to drain money from those who produce, under the banner of “fairness” or “affordability.” But let’s be honest: fairness is not when everyone is brought down to the same level of struggle. Fairness is when the system rewards effort, innovation, and enterprise—and ensures the conditions for growth are in place.

Unless this changes, the so-called reforms will only deepen the storm: higher taxes, lower growth, and a country less free, less prosperous, and less hopeful than it should be.

Over the coming posts, I’ll continue to explore these reforms in detail—but for now, the message is clear. A government that spends without creating, and taxes without reforming, cannot lead a nation to prosperity. It can only lead us further into decline.