Wyre Forest MP Mark Garnier writes for the Standard.
THE PARTY conference season is drawing to a close.
We’ve had Reform, Lib Dems, Labour and this week, my party, the Conservatives.
To most people, this is an unfathomable display of navel gazing, politicians talking to themselves about stuff which most people ignore.
Indeed, pollsters tell us that the average person thinks about politics for just five minutes a week.
But what is emerging from these conferences is the difference between political parties. And this is important, because it defines what will happen to all of our savings, our ability to buy a home, provide for our retirement and how we earn a living.
Labour, of course, is left of centre. But it is clear that they have some hard left influences within it.
Irrespective of that, they believe in public services, and a lot of welfare. We know they have already messed up public finances and the economy – business confidence is at its lowest ever and growth has stalled, whilst there is a freshly dug black hole in public finances of at least £30billion. So, their answer? Tax us all more.
Reform is interesting. Socially on the right – they will be quite tough on things like immigration – but definitely on the left economically. They want to nationalise utilities, but interestingly, match fund this with a raid on all of our private pensions. Let me know how you feel about your pension savings being used to bail out Thames Water.
Which leaves the Conservatives.
We are socially on the right – we have made announcements about the ECHR and illegal migration.
But economically, we are also on the right – indeed, the only party on the right. We support the private sector and the wealth creators.
Wyre Forest has around 3,500 small and medium sized businesses. They are run by entrepreneurs and hard-working individuals. They employ the vast majority of our local workers, and they are the life blood of our community. They pay taxes. But if you tax them too much, they can’t afford to invest. Tax them for employing people and they will employ fewer of our community.
And when some cannot cope with the pressure, the pressure falls on other businesses.
We must support our local wealth creators.
