AT the Liberal Democrat (a misnomer if ever there was one) Conference, Vince Cable declares that the current economic strife is the equivalent of being at war.
The facts are that anyone trying to run a business in the private sector during the last two decades have been at war, fighting a tidal wave of regulation introduced by politicians with no inkling of what it takes to run a profitable enterprise.
The accumulation of expensive social policies, and the accompanying penal taxation regime, had already placed British industry at a competitive disadvantage.
The banking crisis together with the freefall in commercial property values has produced an environment where many businesses can neither borrow sufficiently or have the comfort of a significant commercial freehold asset on their balance sheet.
What we need is a radical programme of real job creation accompanied by a low tax enterprise environment – something which seems beyond the vision of any current mainstream political party.
