I came to the UK in 1999, when it was a country alive with opportunity and a belief that success could be earned through hard work.
It is the country I built my life in and the country I love, but it is being destroyed.
Labour swept to power after years of Conservative disarray, promising stability, competence and fairness.
What voters have received instead is scandal, incompetency and a Chancellor whose vision for economic growth seems rooted in punishing the very people who want Britain to succeed.
As someone who has invested, worked and contributed here for more than two decades, I have watched confidence drain at an alarming pace.
Britain once welcomed success and rewarded contribution; today its government treats aspiration with disdain.
The UK competes globally for talent and capital, and if other economies offer lower taxes and lighter regulation, entrepreneurs simply go elsewhere.
For Ms Reeves to blatantly lie about low business emigration and insult the electorate with her “bleating” comment makes a global embarrassment of the UK.
The biggest wealth creators have already left.
The process commenced after George Osborne knee-jerk reaction to Labour’s attacks on non-doms with his very short signed measures (by his own later admission) in the summer of 2015.
Once it became clear Labour would form the next government in 2024, the last wave of mobile wealth is on the move.
The same pattern of punishing the well-to-do looks to continue with proposals to impose an annual levy on property taxing households on assets that produce no income.
Families who bought modest homes decades ago, now pushed into high valuations by inflation would be expected to hand over thousands in cash each year simply for living in them.
Most cannot produce that money without depleting savings or selling the very homes that were meant to secure their future. The result is forced sales, falling house values and the erosion of many families’ only meaningful asset.
Employment numbers tell their own story and it’s one of wasted potential.
Over a million young people are out of work or education, vacancies have fallen for the thirty-ninth month straight, pay has flatlined, and unemployment is at a five year high.
When Reeves entered No 11, UK employment rate stood at 4.1%, now it is at 5%. Yet instead of supporting people into jobs and backing businesses creating jobs, the Government’s first instinct is to grab more cash.
Reeves won’t confront record welfare spending and would rather squeeze those who generate employment to fund the livelihoods of those who don’t. That’s not fairness; it’s failure on an historic scale.
What truly distinguishes this government is not one scandal or policy error but the sheer volume of failings.
Angela Rayner resigned after being found to have breached the ministerial code over her tax affairs.
Rushanara Ali, who built her political persona on attacking landlords, was revealed to have evicted tenants from her own property before reletting it at a sharply higher rent, precisely the practice her own government had vowed to ban.
Then came the cascade of ministerial exits: Sue Gray departing amid internal chaos; Louise Haigh resigning after disclosure of a past fraud conviction; Tulip Siddiq stepping down over alleged corruption links abroad; Andrew Gwynne sacked for offensive messages; Dan Norris arrested on serious charges; and Peter Mandelson dismissed after documents revealed his defence of Jeffrey Epstein.
Together, they point to a culture of negligence and hypocrisy that sits at the heart of this administration.
Reeves speaks endlessly of “working people,” yet she shows little understanding of their reality.
On her ministerial salary of [£100,000] and expense budget of [£250,000] and all other perks, she has never had to meet payroll, manage risk or build anything from scratch.
Her policies are eroding business confidence, draining investment, and crushing aspirations.
Each cash grab to fill the growing public spending demands created by her own government moves the country further from prosperity.
And still, she refuses to look in the mirror and confront her Party’s socialist ideology. She refuses to admit that only by attracting private capital and entrepreneurship into the UK we can afford the social safety net that our country requires.
Labour are condemning those very people who vote for them to deepening hardship and our beautiful country to 1970s style decline.
Aspiration built this country. A government at war with aspiration cannot lead it to prosperity.
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Lubov Chernukhin is a British-Russian businesswoman, philanthropist and investor. She is the wife of Russian businessman and former Finance Minister to Vladimir Putin, Vladimir Chernukhin. Mrs Chernukhin is the largest female donor in British political history, having donated £2 million to the Conservatives from 2012 to 2020.
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