ASPIRATION is the lifeblood of success. It built this country and every other successful nation.
But myopic policies and a lack of vision from the ruling class — civil servants, politicians, judges — is draining aspiration, undermining our future prosperity and frustrating those who seek to improve their lot.
There is a war on aspiration and it’s time we fought back.
A determination to get on — for yourself, your family and your neighbours — is Britain’s greatest asset.
My own experience involves it, along with a healthy dose of bloody-mindedness.
Told that no one would ever buy a bagless vacuum cleaner, and that someone else would have invented one already if the idea worked, I decided to risk everything I had.
It took me 5,127 prototypes, each made by hand.
I was on the brink of bankruptcy before I found success.
Upping sticks
Now headquartered in Singapore, Dyson employs 2,000 people in Britain, sells products in 85 markets and in the last year on record contributed £103million in UK tax.
But I worry that Britain no longer has the aspiration to create the Dysons of the future.
Those who do seek to improve their lives are being driven away, and it’s not just millionaires that are upping sticks.
Thousands of trained doctors are quitting the NHS every year to work overseas. Those who are starting new businesses are doing so elsewhere.
They have decided it’s just not worth doing it here.
The roots of this go deeper than the last 12 months — but Labour has gleefully poured fuel on the fire since the election.
What message does a 20 per cent tax on private school fees send to parents?
That if you work hard to give your children the best possible start in life, you will be clobbered for it. This is how aspiration drains away.
Labour has ramped up employer National Insurance, triggering job losses, stopping investment and hitting ordinary workers hardest.
Those who aspire to create wealth and jobs, and those who grow our food, will all be punished. They hate those who set out to try, with hostility.
New employment laws granting employees ever more rights will mean tribunal claims will rocket.
Hard-pressed, aspiring employers, coping with punitive and costly claims, will stop hiring.
Even more jobs will disappear, and businesses will prefer to contract rather than expand.
Ambition and growth are being killed.
There is now an extra 20 per cent death duty on family businesses and farms just because they are family-owned — actually closer to 40 per cent once you get the money out of the business to settle the bill.
This puts these family-owned companies at an immediate disadvantage to their international rivals, those owned by private equity and those that are public.
Labour is out to destroy.
Those who aspire to create wealth and jobs, and those who grow our food, will all be punished. They hate those who set out to try, with hostility.
Their actions can only be seen as vindictive since, as independent reports now show, the new taxes on aspiration will harm the economy.
The tax on family firms and farms is set to cost the economy £14.8billion by 2030 and non-doms departing are already costing £10billion a year.
There are plenty of ambitious young entrepreneurs in this country.
But if the desire to be successful is punished, with tax and red tape, the talented and aspirational will take their ideas and leave. Those struggling to stay afloat will give up.
Our political leaders could start by studying Arthur Laffer, the brilliant economist who once scribbled on a napkin a graph that became world-famous.
It explained, with total clarity, that if taxes rise too far, the cash coming to the country’s coffers doesn’t keep rising. It plummets.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves will learn this to her cost in the years ahead, as wealth creators leave and businesses stop hiring and investing.
Create the wealth
Compare this to when the Conservatives reduced the Corporation Tax rate.
Businesses grew faster, and the country received even more tax.
If Labour and the political class truly want long-term growth, they should ditch the new taxes and regulations that attack aspiration.
They need to encourage those who want to get on.
If Britain once again rewards enterprise and backs those who want to succeed, the next generation won’t have to look elsewhere for opportunity.
Aspiration should be at the centre of our national story: In what we teach young people in the classroom and in our universities, how we encourage founders to start businesses and grow them, unblocking obstacles in their path.
I learned through hard-won experience that success isn’t handed to us — we have to engineer it.
Prosperity has to be earned by each generation, or it’s gone.
If Britain once again rewards enterprise and backs those who want to succeed, the next generation won’t have to look elsewhere for opportunity.
It is they who will build the ideas and create the wealth we so desperately need.
