Nigel Farage Explodes at “Wimbledon Politics” — Accuses Ministers of Bowing to Big Corporations

Britain’s small business owners lose out because the government only listens to big corporations whose lobbyists take ministers to Wimbledon, Nigel Farage has said.

The Reform leader also hit out at the ‘endless red tape’ imposed on bosses by the European Union as well as UK regulators.

And he vowed that if he becomes Prime Minister, his administration would change the country’s culture and ensure that it celebrates capitalism rather than thinking it is ‘morally wrong to make money’.

Launching a new forum called Small Business for Reform on Monday, at an event in London with hundreds of entrepreneurs, Mr Farage said: ‘There is no understanding of the impact of legislation, and that is because government only listens to big business.

‘I saw this myself in my 20 years in Brussels. The big companies have their own lobbying offices, and it’s not dissimilar here in Westminster; it’s the big businesses that take you to Wimbledon. It’s the big businesses that take people out for dinner. It’s the big businesses that shape policy, and the small businesses, frankly, don’t even get a look in.

‘We’re not living in capitalism. We’re living in an age of global corporatism. We’re living in an age where businesses virtually control and own the political arena.’

But asked by the Mail if he would ban ministers in a Reform government from accepting freebies, he said: ‘Well that depends what corporate hospitality is. Is it having a cup of tea, clearly not. Is corporate hospitality going to Wimbledon, perhaps it is.

‘The most important thing about this is that it’s above board and it’s not hidden so that everyone can see.’

He praised the small business owners who come up with ideas and take risks.

‘Some of them, who, despite everything, go on, succeed, make lots of money, well they’re almost treated in Britain as if they’ve done something wrong. As if morally it’s wrong to be successful, morally it’s wrong to make money.

‘Well what a Reform government will do is everything we can do from to the education system onwards to change that culture. We will champion hard work. We will champion success. We will look to advertise men and women who we see as British heroes, because they’ve set things up and they’ve succeeded.’

Mr Farage singled out for criticism anti-tax-avoidance rules, known as IR35, which have ‘made life very, very difficult for self-employed contractors’, a 30 per cent increase in corporation tax introduced by the Tories and the ability of staff to sue companies for unfair dismissal on day one of their new jobs under Labour’s Employment Rights Bill.

He also said the VAT threshold for businesses is ‘far too low’ but declined to repeat Reform’s election promise to cut taxes for small businesses.

Told that many bosses complain about the added bureaucracy they have to deal with as a result of Brexit, he insisted: ‘We had 50 years of red tape from Brussels, 50 years of endless red tape.’

And he went on: ‘It’s actually a double problem. It isn’t just the EU rulebook, big problem though that is, it is the massive over-interpretation of that rulebook by regulators, by quangos, by bureaucrats in this country.’