After a moment of epiphany, everything changes. Our brains get re-wired, and the world looks like a different place. Some people travel the world in search of these epiphanies, seeking spiritual guidance in some far-flung, lush, or exotic corner of the planet
Me? My defining moment of epiphany struck in the West Midlands Town of Dudley, in an office block besides a roundabout off the A4123. I guess that’s the thing about epiphanies: they tend to surprise you.
The moment in question arrived during a Q&A session with Lord Chris Fox, at an event coordinated by the Lib Dem Business Network. “I’m trying to look for a party that simply supports businesses in the UK right now”, exclaimed an apolitical audience member (and owner of a small business), “but I just can’t see one”.
Take a step back, and that sentiment crystalises so much of what is unique about this moment in the UK’s political history. A Labour government coming to power and delivering anaemic growth should, traditionally, precipitate an obvious reaction: the business community rallying behind the Conservative party in opposition.
But businesses aren’t doing that. And nor will they. The toxic cocktail of Brexit, Liz Truss, and fourteen years of stagnation has contaminated the Tory brand like a poison, one that has dissolved the foundations on which Britain’s hitherto most successful political party had built its identity.
I describe that gentleman’s comment as a moment of epiphany, because it did change something in the way I looked at politics in Britain. This space that has opened up for the Liberal Democrats in Conservative heartlands, one that we exploited to great effect at the General Election, is more than a trend. It’s something profound. On the one hand, it’s a reaction to a Tory party that does genuinely seem more interested in Twitter arguments than fixing real-world problems (church roofs, anyone?). But on the other hand, it’s also about hope, optimism, and confidence that Britain is a good country in which to build your future – be that the future of your family, or your business.
Optimism is a foreign language for today’s Conservatives. Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick both talk with the furrowed scowls of the chronically online; people whose emotional range and imagination are hemmed in by outrage and obsession. Keir Starmer, for that matter, hardly does any better. By contrast, Ed Davey and the Lib Dems seem to stand alone in actually liking this country.
Optimism is our thing, and that filters through to our approach to businesses. We’d scrap the Employer National Insurance hike that has put so many ambitions on hold and is dragging down opportunities for meaningful employment. We’d do away with business rates as part of our plan to revive the high street. And we’d renegotiate a Customs Union deal with the EU to breathe life back into British manufacturing and reignite growth across the country.
This is all an excellent start. But we need to continue to articulate the pro-businesses case with pride, confidence, and volume. Why should we not? In an era of international uncertainty, protectionism and greed, now is the perfect time to remind the world that free trade was, after all, a liberal idea. And in 2025, it remains so.
In Mark Pack and Jim Williams’ excellent review of the 2024 General Election, they coined a phrase that has stuck with me: that the Liberal Democrats should help Brits to “sleep easy, and dream big”. I contend that the best way to help people dream big is to lean into a pro-business agenda – help Brits to start businesses, innovate, prosper, and grow an economy that has been underperforming its potential for too long.
In a year or so’s time, I’d like to return to that roundabout-side office block to speak with that small business owner again. Because my hope is that he’ll have had an epiphany of his own in the intervening period: that the party of business had, in fact, been here all along.
* Adam Bennett is a Liberal Democrat member and the party's Business Engagement Manager, based at our HQ.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Labour councillor missing in action
New NHS cash will be wasted if social care is left untouched
Prince William's billionaire pal dies after swallowing bee while playing polo
Transition Dundee Ceilidh #dundeewestend
The Trinity made comprehensible.
A remarkable woman and a park
Lib Dems in the King's birthday honours 2025
Andy Daer
Simon R
John Waller
Geoffrey Payne
8 Comments
I appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t think we should be casting ourselves as the party of any particular vested interest – that so easily becomes divisive in a way that is all too familiar from other parties.
Liberal Democrats should present ourselves as the party of society as a whole – one in which, yes, businesses can thrive, but not at the expense of workers or communities. A society in which we can all “sleep easy, and dream big” must be one which is fair to businesses but not afraid set firm rules and take action when they step out of line.
I Totally agree Adam running a small business is liberating and you mention Dudley aha well you should celebrate that fact that we now have 5 Lib Dem Councillors on Dudley MBC. From nowhere in less than Two years thanks to Cllr Ryan Priest and the energy of our small but highly focused team.
I’ve long thought there is a vacancy for a Party to genuinely champion the SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) that make up over 90% of companies and provide over 60% of private sector jobs in the UK. All parties pay lip service to small business, but rarely invest the time and effort to properly understand them and the challenges they face.
Big business can always buy the influence it wants from whoever is in power, with Labour politicians just as keen on freebies and expensive meals as their Tory predecessors.
But SMEs are operating and providing employment in all of our communities, with little voice or attention from Government. The Lib Dems should listen to them, and become the natural political home for small business owners.
Easy to say “We’d scrap the Employer National Insurance hike…..and we’d do away with business rates as part of our plan to revive the high street” but that begs a very big question: what else would we tax in order to cover revenue lost by doing so?
For far too long all Politicians have been trying to convince people that we can have Scandinavian levels of public services with American style low taxes. This has led to despondency and disillusion when it can’t be delivered. Liberal Democrats should try to start an honest debate about what level of public services and welfare provision the public really want, and what they are prepared to pay for.
Steve is absolutely right in his assessment and conclusions.
In the run up to the 2024 election, the incompetence of the Conservatives was so clear that Kier Starmer and Labour could have chosen to be honest with the public and tell people that Britain can’t just go on providing stuff but not paying for it. Instead they promised not to increase Income Tax, National Insurance or VAT. It might have cost them 5 to 10 seats, but they would still have won easily but they preferred to tell the same old lazy lies and when reality hit them once in power, they rapidly became the most unpopular new government ever.
Sadly, Ed dropped similar pledges into our manifesto, and so we focussed on new taxes designed not to affect ordinary people. While right in principle, it lost us the opportunity to come clean with a ‘We are all in this together’ message and build on our position of being the only adults in the room over Brexit.
Now we are in power in several new councils and having to face up to the problems of running councils already effectively bankrupted by the Conservatives. I hope we have been very, very clear to our communities on how bad things are in those councils, because if we haven’t and we have to make the inevitable cuts and redundancies to balance the books, in a couple of years’ time we could be very close to the position Labour are in now.
I suggest “the party of RESPONSIBLE business” which recognises that bigger businesses are also necessary and should be encouraged. It reflects Adam Smith’s view that economics should be based on morality. Interestingly, recently argued by Mark Carney, Martin Wolf, Joe Stiglitz, John Kay ……….
Liberal business policy should be moreabout removing the obstacles of businesses (currently the main thing are probably the barriers to trade caused by the Brexit) than subsidising them.
I agree with Adam that there is a void that we can fill.
The Tories have always (falsely) promoted themselves as the party for business and pretended to be financially competent – both shown to be lies.
The opportunities for the party is to offer SMEs (Small and Medium Sized Enterprises = less than 250 employees and less than £50 million turnover): as longer-term financial stability as they can; reasonable and steady interest rates; access to borrowing; barrier – and paperwork- free access to EU Markets – both import and export; fair taxation systems that doesn’t allow large corporations to ‘off-shore’ money / profits; rules that are applied and enforced to all; Government – National and Local – contracts that are broken into small enough tranches to allow SMEs to bid; to actually listen to SMEs all the time and not just pay lip service around election time.
As a Party, we don’t seem to have targeted / listened to small business owners. We have the Lib Dem Business Network with membership fees at between £600 and £2500 per year. Very few small businesses will be able to afford this.
We need a proper Small Business Group with accessible fees.
I note from the pen portraits of our 2025 MP intake that many describe themselves as entrepreneurs or business people – let us here more from them championing SMEs and from the position of experience and personal understanding of the issues facing small business.