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Small businesses "sick to death" of being called "the backbone of the economy”

ended 19. May 2026

As a small business owner, are you fed up of people, often those who have never run a small business, referring to you as “the backbone of the economy”, as the PM has just done in the late payments announcement? Does this phrase do justice to the real small business economy, or is it trite and over-used? What's your take on it? 

11 responses from the Newspage community

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Scott Gallacher
Director at Rowley Turton
It’s not really the phrase itself I take issue with, it’s the increasing pressure many small businesses are under. Rising regulation, higher taxes and increasing employment costs all make it harder for smaller firms to invest, recruit and grow, despite the important role they play in the economy and local communities. Many owners feel there is plenty of rhetoric about supporting small businesses, but less focus on creating a stable long-term environment that genuinely encourages entrepreneurship and investment. Ultimately, most small business owners simply want the confidence to keep employing people, serving clients and planning for the future.
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Harry Goodliffe
Director at HTG Mortgages
Small businesses are more than a political catchphrase; calling them the “backbone of the economy” has begun to sound pretty hollow to many owners, especially as many are struggling with rising costs, late payments, and constant government uncertainty. Most people running small businesses don’t want praise; they want practical support and policies that actually make life easier.
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Kate Underwood
Founder & Chief People Strategist at Kate Underwood HR and Training
It’s become a bit of a cliché because it’s usually said right before small businesses get hit with another cost, another form, or another “just crack on” expectation.
Small firms do keep the economy moving. You take the risks, you create jobs, you train people up, and you keep local communities going. But “backbone of the economy” has turned into a throwaway line. It’s praise instead of practical support.
And honestly, if we really are the backbone, why do we always get screwed? When big companies pay late or play games with tax, the pressure rolls downhill and lands on the smallest suppliers who can least afford it. Then taxes go up and small businesses are the ones who actually pay, because we can’t hide it.
If some of the companies trading in this country paid the tax they should, taxes wouldn’t need to rise so much. So yes, small businesses are the backbone, but the Chancellor needs to grow a backbone too and deal with the ones avoiding payments.
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Ben Perks
Managing Director at Orchard Financial Advisers
A man without a backbone, complimenting ours. Small businesses are the backbone of the country, but that backbone is carrying an ever increasing burden. It baffles me that the PM can praise small businesses, whilst doing absolutely nothing to help and support them.
Unemployment figures are up today and job vacancies are lower than ever. This government Is stifling small businesses and making employing people expensive and unattractive.
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Adam Stiles
Managing Director at Helix Financial Partners
It's weird being referred to as 'the backbone of the economy' when the government (aka Business Prevention Unit) is taking the tax equivalent of a cricket bat to it. I have never known any Government more anti-business in my lifetime.
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Kate Allen
Owner at Finest Stays
Perhaps we need a refresh. Maybe small businesses are the nervous system of the economy because they react quickly and feel every shock first. Running a small business can be pretty nerve-wracking at the best of times, and many owners would say even more so in the current political and economic climate, where every announcement seems to arrive with a fresh opportunity to test our blood pressure.
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Tony Redondo
Founder at Cosmos Currency Exchange
Hackneyed. It's a cliché so worn out it has lost all original meaning. A conversational placeholder that makes small business owners' eyes roll. Politicians deploy warm, focus-group-tested buzzwords instead of tackling the structural imbalances that actually keep owners awake at 2 AM. The phrase glamorises burden without offering relief and completely misrepresents the reality. Small businesses aren't a passive support structure. They are the economy's shock absorbers, pivoting without corporate safety nets when conditions deteriorate. They're the genuine engine of innovation, where calculated risk and real agility live. And unlike corporations, owners have their personal names, capital, and reputations on the line daily. Small wonder the phrase rings hollow when barely 8% of MPs have any business or commercial background. It's low-cost, high-gloss language from people who've never had to make payroll.
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Oli Garnett
Co-Founder at Something Familiar.
“Small businesses are the backbone of the economy” is one of those phrases politicians wheel out right before making life even harder for them. At this point the backbone’s slipped a disc. Most small business owners I know are carrying rising costs, late payments, tax hikes, and the financial hangover of generations before them who could buy a house for the price of a Freddo. Millennials are trying to run companies while simultaneously inheriting broken pensions, impossible property markets and parents asking how to reset the Wi-Fi. Calling us the “backbone” is lovely, but it would be even nicer if the economy stopped treating that backbone like it’s in a demolition derby.
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Sam Kirk
Managing Director at J-Flex Rubber Products
If SMEs are the backbone of the economy, it’s because small business owners take the risks nobody else will.

We sign the guarantees. We carry the stress. We lie awake at 3am worrying about cash flow, wages, survival etc.

The phrase itself [backbone of the economy] is used far too casually in Westminster by people who have never experienced the reality of running a business, and frankly, I'm fed up of hearing it.
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Colette Mason
AI Ethics Consultant at Clever Clogs AI
No politician who calls small businesses the "backbone" ever asks or seems to care what's compressing the discs. This kitsch platitude needs join 'strong and stable' and 'change' in the graveyard of things that sounded supportive and delivered absolutely nothing.
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Tony Robinson OBE
Chair at Yorkshire in Business Limited
I'm not only sick to death of the "backbone" phrase, but I've spent over 30 years campaigning against the lying politicians who use it.

You may have seen my hashtags/events: #PayIn30Days or less (made meaningless by the new 'late payment' legislation); #NotAnSME (politicians conflate 'SME' to mean 'small'), and #MicroBizMatters (5 million of us with 0-9 employees, including 3 million of the #ExcludedUK, from income support during Covid).

Start-ups, self-employed people and micro-business owners are the backbone of our communities. We provide new jobs. community regeneration and innovation that the country needs.

Politicians trash us by starving cash-flow, allowing unfair payment terms, killing indie high street businesses, crazy-high, unavoidable business and employment costs, and costs including lost time from regulatory compliance.

There have been 22 years of consistent government discrimination against startups, self-employed people, and micro-business owners.