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Backing or Breaking SMEs? Labour’s Messaging Meets Reality

ended 07. December 2025

Labour has launched a full-blown social media blitz claiming “Labour is backing small businesses.” Rachel Reeves has echoed the line on LinkedIn, while Keir Starmer insists that “small businesses are the beating heart of our economy.”

But for many SMEs, these messages feel detached from reality. After months of rising costs, rising taxes, added regulation, and little meaningful support, business owners are asking whether this new rhetoric is genuine, or just more political spin.

  1. Has Labour helped your business at all, or only made life harder?
  2. Does their claim of “backing small businesses” feel like spin to you?
  3. Is Starmer proving one of the worst PMs for SMEs in recent memory?

10 responses from the Newspage community

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Kate AllenVerified
Owner at Finest Stays
When I saw their post, I genuinely thought it was satire, but no, it was actually Labour. Nothing sums up how out of touch they are more than Keir Starmer parroting, “when they succeed, Britain succeeds… my government is backing incredible entrepreneurs.” Backing us with what, exactly? Higher taxes, higher costs, and policies that actively suffocate growth?

Labour’s relentless taxing and squeezing of small businesses is precisely why we can’t hire, invest, or expand. Every new policy hits SMEs first and hardest, and then they have the audacity to launch a PR campaign pretending to be our champions. The sooner Labour are gone, the better.
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Riz MalikVerified
Independent Financial Adviser at R3 Wealth
Labour should be in the Hague for economic crimes towards small businesses. They cannot support SMEs, which are the foundation of the UK economy, because they do not understand business. None of them are entrepreneurs, none of them have put it all on the line, and the best we can hope for from them is that they don't mess things up further.
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Tony RedondoVerified
Founder at Cosmos Currency Exchange
This Labour government claiming to back small businesses is beyond a joke. Cloud-cuckoo land. There isn’t a gap between rhetoric and reality. It’s a chasm. The increase in employer NICs from April 2025 (from 13.8% to 15%, with the threshold dropping from £9,100 to £5,000) is projected to cost businesses significantly, with some estimates suggesting £25bn annually across the economy. The National Living Wage increase, rising to £12.21/hour hits labour-intensive sectors hard. The Employment Rights Bill increases compliance costs and reduces flexibility for smaller employers and the increase in business rates. If this is backing small businesses, I hate to think of what the government would do if it was anti-small business.
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Ross LaceyVerified
Director & Independent Financial Adviser at Fairview Financial Management
Increased Employers National Insurance, increased dividend tax, increased corporation tax, lower dividend allowance and the minefield of navigating the risks associated with employing people through the new Employment Rights Bill...

For Labour to claim that they've done anything positive for small business is ridiculous.
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Rohit KohliVerified
Director at The Mortgage Stop
“Backing small business” shouldn’t mean higher costs, more red tape, and a fresh U-turn every fortnight. Real backing is certainty, cash-flow headroom, and a clear path to hire, invest, and take a fair wage. Right now, owners are cutting drawings, parking hires, and praying the next rule change doesn’t land on payday. The AI fanfare is tinsel on an empty tree - nice sparkle, nothing inside. Stop posting slogans and start removing barriers: simplify, cut the drag, and stick to decisions. Until then, calling this “backing business” is like wrapping an empty box and demanding applause.
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Scott GallacherVerified
Director at Rowley Turton
It’s hard to see how Labour can claim to back small businesses. Higher Employer NI, steep minimum wage rises for younger workers, and proposed day-one employment rights all increase costs and hiring risks. Add higher dividend taxes and frozen allowances, and owners must take more out just to stand still — leaving less to invest in growth.
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Kate UnderwoodVerified
Founder & Chief People Strategist at Kate Underwood HR and Training
If this is Labour “backing small business”, I would hate to see what neglect looks like.
Labour can splash “backing small business” across X and LinkedIn, but from where I am it feels like they have turned their back on us. You cannot call SMEs “the beating heart of the economy” while piling on costs, taxes and red tape, then throw us a hashtag and call it support.
Most small business owners I know are working ridiculous hours just to stand still. Wage rises, tax, rent, energy, late paying clients, recruitment headaches, staff who are also struggling at home. Where is the proper, targeted relief? Where is the confidence that if you hire, invest and grow, government will not move the goalposts again in six months?
Right now Labour’s “we love small business” line feels like pure spin. Nice slogans, brutal reality.
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Rohit Parmar-MistryVerified
Founder at Pattrn Data
Let’s call this what it is: utter tripe. If Labour were serious about backing small businesses, IR35 would be on the scrapheap by now. Instead, we’re seeing the same tired playbook we endured under the Tories, pandering to massive corporations and the investment class while the real engines of the economy get crushed.

You cannot build a thriving economy when your customer base is broke. Real growth doesn't come from boardroom presentations; it comes from putting money in the hands of the everyman so they can actually spend it with local SMEs. Labour and the Conservatives are just two sides of the same horrendous coin of neoliberal economics, a model that is fundamentally broken.

Until a party has the guts to challenge the dominance of big corporate interests and actually stimulate consumption, this 'backing business' rhetoric is just noise. The economic model is dead on its feet, and SMEs are the ones paying the funeral costs.
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Sam KirkVerified
Managing Director at J-Flex Rubber Products
Has Labour helped my business?! Not one bit. Did I expect anything less? Absolutely not, and this latest nonesense about backing small businesses demonstrates how tone deaf those inside the Westminster bubble are.

Many firms are still seething with the decision to hike National Insurance in April, one of the biggest manifesto u-turns do date. "Oh no it isn’t" exclaimed panto villain Rachel. "Oh yes it is" said everybody else.

In the real world accountability means something. If a supplier promises one thing and delivers the opposite, you stop working with them. If a manager breaks a commitment, they answer for it. But in politics accountability barely registers. Promises get regurgitated or forgotten all together, while the people who actually create jobs and pay the bills are left - just like Cinderella - to clean up the mess.
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Colette MasonVerified
AI Ethics Consultant at Clever Clogs AI
From my personal experience, Labour has ruined the knowledge-based sector since IR35 in 1999. It decided "using your brain" was not seen as "proper business" like a "plumber with a set of spanners", despite the risks of no pension, sick pay or holiday, and a one-month termination clause. Now it's adding new strings to its policy bow to strangle the remaining product and service-based industries with crippling rises in tax and sky-high energy bills.

My role in automation is to plug cost leaks for SMEs. As soon as I help a business fix a leak, the government hammers another hole in the bucket, then disappears until the next budget to hammer in another hole.

You can't claim to "back small businesses" while your policies actively make it harder to operate, and has for decades, frankly. The rhetoric sounds supportive, but the reality keeps punishing the very businesses they claim to champion. I remain beyond disappointed.