Lockdown had one major advantage. We can be pretty sure that anyone who supported the closure of the economy, and the attack on small business owners and entrepreneurs, was probably a free-loader, authoritarian or lefty.  Or all three. So it’s been a handy way to identify people who are best avoided.  

The most public advocates of lockdowns, masks, vaccine mandates and the assorted paraphernalia of state coercion were probably on the public payroll, or recipients of public-body largesse paid for by us.  Now these hangers-on will moan loudly about public sector cuts and tax increases - as well as a cost of living crisis and rampant inflation - all caused, apparently, by Liz Truss’s mini-budget. It was nothing to do, we’re told, with over a decade of zero interest rate policy and QE - that have crippled the pound and landed us in a GDP to public debt ratio of nearly 100%.  Meanwhile Christine Lagarde claims that inflation came from nowhere.  

Throughout this monumental mess, business owners have been beavering away trying desperately to make payroll month on month - with ever-decreasing margins and crippling increases in input costs.  As Matt Hancock gets his six-figure fee to appear on “I’m a Celebrity,” business owners across the country are still wrestling with the economic and social destruction caused by a so-called Conservative government.

According to the ONS, “total company insolvencies in England and Wales in the second quarter of 2022 reached their highest quarterly level since Quarter 3 (July to Sept) 2009, driven by Creditors' Voluntary Liquidations.” 

In short, the levels of business insolvency are now getting close to the levels last seen after the financial crash. And they’ll get worse. 

Part of the reason is that the lockdown “support” provided by the government kept the lid on things. Employees could be kept on the books because of furlough. The government offered dodgy loan or equity support schemes - often with terrible terms attached. But, for many businesses, emerging from lockdown was a bit like arriving in a nuclear Winter - the government has been in disarray, currency markets have been all over the place, purchasing power of the pound has been eroded and supply chains have been disrupted by the Johnson/Biden war in the Ukraine. 

But many businesses have thrived. Some of the businesses that have been most supportive of the assault on individual freedoms are, ironically, going down. Facebook - one of the chief scare-mongers, de-platformers and propagandists, has seen its stock values plummet. Many of its big advertisers are thoroughly discredited (big pharma and governments among them).  But social media companies come and go. It’ll be no great loss.  

Meanwhile Elon Musk overpaid handsomely for Twitter and is now seeking to make some return on his investment by charging users to pontificate on the platform (especially blue-tick free-loaders).  Fair enough.  Visibility costs - so either users pay or advertisers pay.  But it’s looking increasingly like the advertiser-paid platform model is dying.  So expect more turbulence in the markets.  

But many small and medium sized businesses have weathered the storm. I’d love to feature some stories of resilience - from hospitality or tourism businesses that have succeeded despite the odds. I’d love to hear about tech firms that have managed to get funding to produce new products and services that have individual liberty and privacy at their hearts.  I’d like to hear about businesses who have campaigned against woke (or ESG) and won.  

Just contact me.  I’d be delighted to feature guest posts, or I can interview you and pop up a podcast right here and deliver it to the thousands who subscribe to this site or our sister sites - and the tens of thousands who follow me on social media. Free publicity for your story.  

Email me now on thenewerauk@protonmail.com