Starting and running a business in Britain in 2026 - let’s go through it, step by step…
You've got a good idea. You've worked hard, saved some money, and decided to take a risk. A big decision. Let's say you want to open a coffee shop - nothing overly extravagant. Surely this is possible, right?
Available unit on a local high street, you see a gap in the market.
A simple ambition to build something. Create jobs. Generate wealth. Contribute to your local community. Maybe even build a better future for your family.
Exactly the sort of person politicians claim they admire.
Unfortunately, you've chosen the wrong country to do it in.
Britain. 2026. Labour. Bugger.
The first thing you discover is that absolutely nothing is straightforward.
You register the business. Not impossible, but hardly simple. The foreign vape shop owners manage it, so why not you? Done. In fairness, not the most challenging part of this story...
Then comes the bank account - you’d think opening a business account would be a routine matter.
Instead, you're treated like a criminal. You want to sell coffee, not arms. The banks are simply out of control in this country. Just like the lawyers, but that’s a different story.
Legitimate entrepreneurs should not be waiting weeks while faceless compliance departments shuffle paperwork between themselves and refuse to answer questions - slash it all back and let people just get on with it.
Eventually you get through that hurdle and secure the premises.
Perfect location. Lots of footfall. Not a total dump. It can work.
Then reality arrives.
The rent is eye-watering - contracts have clause after clause after clause. How can anybody understand it all?
Insurance is through the roof. And before you've served a single coffee, the local authority is already getting its grubby hands on your money. Energy costs are so very painful...
Business rates - one of the most destructive taxes in Britain. And for what? What do we get from that money?
You are effectively punished for occupying premises and creating economic activity. For PAYING TAX. It is insane. A Restore Britain Government would abolish business rates entirely for small high street businesses. Pubs, cafes, bakeries. All of it. No business rates.
Then come the inspections. Oh joy. The paperwork. The bureaucracy. The council gnomes.
Nobody objects to basic standards. Of course cafes should be clean and safe.
The problem is that too much of the system now exists to justify the existence of regulators rather than help businesses succeed. They are there to prove that their job needs to exist. So rules get put on rules, on top of more rules. It is endless.
Many of the people enforcing these rules have never built a business, never employed anybody and never risked their own money. Never done anything. Work half weeks, with 30+ days holiday a year. Fridays at home, of course.
A profession filled with nit-picking gits.
Restore Britain would conduct a full bonfire of unnecessary regulations and introduce a simple principle. Every regulation should have to justify its existence - if it doesn't prevent genuine harm, it goes. It will be glorious. We will tear it all down.
But let’s say you get through this. You stumble on. The cafe opens, and goes well. People like it. It grows. The coffee is good. You need help. Another bureaucratic nightmare.
PAYE. National Insurance. Pensions. Employment contracts. Holiday entitlement. Workplace policies. Health and safety obligations.
The worst of all - HR.
You look at it all, and just think what’s the point? Is it worth the risk? That is a disaster for our economy, and a disaster for youngsters looking for work.
Restore Britain would slash back employer National Insurance, simplify employment law for small firms and create a framework that protects good employees without treating every employer as a potential criminal.
The HR-ification of Britain will end. If I had to pick a 'profession' I hate the most, HR has to be number one.
Employers will be able to sack employees for not doing the job properly.
It doesn’t matter if they’re black, gay, Muslim or whatever else. This ‘protected characteristic’ nonsense will be stripped away. The only protected characteristic we’re interested in is competence.
We will repeal The Equality Act 2010. This is key. This is where so much of the bullshit emanates from.
But let’s say you don’t want to bother. Maybe bringing in contracting services could work. Wrong.
IR35 - one of the most economically illiterate policies ever introduced by thick idiots in the civil service who have never created a job in their lives.
Restore Britain would scrap IR35 entirely - if two consenting adults wish to enter a genuine contracting arrangement, the state should keep its nose out. Who does what, when and for who is between those two individuals. IR35 is the first thing to go. Burn it and bury it.
But we do want apprenticeships. This is the way forward, and we would give companies tax breaks for developing and building local skills for young men and women. Crucial. I’ve been running an apprenticeship campaign in Great Yarmouth - looking to link local businesses with colleges. Progress made, but lots more to do.
As your business grows, your accountant becomes indispensable. Not because your accounting is particularly complicated or he’s a good bloke, but because the tax system has become absurdly complex. I used to do my own returns. No chance now.
Restore Britain would begin simplifying the tax code from top to bottom.
Tax should be low, simple and transparent. That’s what Restore Britain stands for.
Then comes one of the most notorious barriers in British business.
The VAT threshold.
You finally start making progress, and your turnover approaches the threshold.
Looks good on the face of it, but it’s actually horrific news - cross the line and suddenly everything changes. VAT is applied. What are you supposed to do? Pass the cost on to customers? What are they going to do when the cost of their morning order shoots up? Many firms deliberately limit growth because crossing the threshold creates such a financial shock. That is insanity.
Restore Britain would double the VAT threshold.
Growth should be rewarded, and we would do exactly that.
Somehow, you’re limping on and decide an expansion is needed - maybe a covered outdoor area let’s say. Add more seating. People like to eat outside. Surely this is straightforward?
Planning. The worst people on the planet, whose sole aim is to destroy economic ambition, growth and hope. I detest them all so very much.
Restore Britain would overhaul the system with a presumption in favour of economic development. If planners cannot make a decision within a fixed timeframe, approval should be automatic. We will not keep businesses waiting for months and months. It is simply unacceptable and unfair.
Same for licences to stay open later, host music, even god forbid serve alcohol - the bureaucrat’s nightmare. We wouldn’t want people enjoying themselves, would we?
Restore Britain would introduce another presumption backing small business activity unless there is a compelling reason to refuse it. If customers want to enjoy a drink later on with their friends, let’s make it happen - the burden should be on the regulator to justify their restrictions, not on the entrepreneur to justify growth. Again, let’s give them a time frame to object. If they can’t, it goes through. Job done.
That is what Restore Britain will deliver.
Then there are card payments. Every coffee, sandwich, bottle of water. People just are not using cash. So a small slice disappears off everything, but that turns into thousands. Restore Britain would review payment processing fees and increase competition in the sector.
We must reduce the cost of doing business. This is vital.
We come to HMRC. I hate these people so much. It’s far quicker for a benefits claimant to get hold of the DWP than it is for small business owners to speak to HMRC.
How mad is that?
Restore Britain would introduce meaningful accountability when HMRC gets things wrong, or simply doesn’t pick up the phone. Let’s link senior leadership pay to response times. That will get them jumping.
When you pay the tax, and sign it all off? The anger I feel when I think about where that money goes is not a positive experience. Funding hotel fry ups for Afghan men who have broken into our country. Restore Britain would indiscriminately deport the illegals, as you know, but this is a post about starting a business…
Back to HMRC. They whack me with tax inspection after tax inspection. I wonder why…
Awful people. If I ever get a sniff of power, I will tear that place apart limb by limb.
Then comes the final insult. The salt in the wound. The knife in the back.
You want to pay yourself. You've worked sixteen-hour days, seven days a week. You've risked everything.
You've missed weekends, holidays and family events.
You have carried all the risk.
The wife or husband is constantly pissed off because the phone doesn’t stop ringing.
Now perhaps you'd like some reward. Let’s look at what’s left...
Corporation tax takes a slice. Dividend tax takes another. Student loan repayments take more. National Insurance takes more. Income tax takes more. What’s left?
By the end of it, government has its sticky fingers in your pocket at every stage.
Restore Britain would establish the lowest corporation tax rate in Europe.
We would increase dividend allowances. Slash NI. Cut back income tax. Scrap interest on student loans.
In short - reward your hard work.
Entrepreneurs all over Britain are asking this question...
Why not take a comfortable public sector job, collect the salary, enjoy the pension, work from home, avoid the stress and leave somebody else to create the wealth? Why bother? What's the point?
If enough ambitious people think that, the economy stops functioning. We become even more reliant on the fat, bloated, squid like state.
Politicians in Westminster DO NOT understand what they are doing to businesses in Britain.
I listen to them talk about business and my ears bleed - you do not understand just how thick some of these people are. However bad you imagine, double it. You’re half way there.
It is time for a different sort of politics, a different type of politician.
Restore Britain will make Britain the easiest country in Europe to start, grow and succeed with your own business.
To our cafe owner, wondering if all the endless bullshit is worth it? My message is this…
Keep going. It will get better. Britain needs you.
There is good news - there is finally a political party on your side.
Restore Britain.
My letter to the Director-General of the BBC over their scandalous decision to deliberately exclude Restore Britain from tonight's Makerfield Question Time.
If Rupert Lowe doesn't become our next PM I honestly believe this country will be gone.
No safe future for our kids.
2029 will not just bring another day of voting, it will be the most important vote in history.
We will be literally voting for our lives. So all none voters please get out there and vote to help save our people and our beautiful country. Every single vote will count.
@RestoreBritain ❤️
My dear @ThatAlexWoman,
One has seldom witnessed such a sustained exercise in bad-faith journalism and selective outrage masquerading as analysis.
You begin with the Cyabra report, breathlessly claiming @RupertLowe10 paid a lot of money to use bots to discredit Zia Yusuf. You present this as established fact. Yet you conveniently omit that Cyabra is a reputation-management firm whose business model depends on finding “malicious campaigns” for its clients. When they were hired by the Norwegian government, independent investigators at @faktisk_no later found that many accounts Cyabra labelled as “bots” were in fact real Norwegian citizens. Their methodology has been criticised for lack of transparency. So forgive us if we do not treat their findings as holy writ.
You then accuse Rupert Lowe of “courting the Conservatives” based on an anonymous Sun article. The same Sun article contains no named source and no direct quote from Lowe saying he wishes to “work for” the Tories. This is not journalism, Madam. This is gossip with an agenda.
Regarding @elonmusk's support for Rupert Lowe, you suggest it must be the result of some dark manipulation rather than Musk simply reaching his own conclusion after observing events. The idea that one of the world’s most successful businessmen cannot think for himself is almost charming in its condescension.
You then dredge up the old Brexit Party peerage story and attempt to paint Rupert as some sort of establishment fixer. Yet you fail to apply the same logic to Nigel Farage, who has spent years surrounded by former Conservatives now inside Reform. The hypocrisy is quite something.
You also claim @RestoreBritain_ is “attacking” Reform while barely criticising the Tories. This is simply false. Restore has focused its fire on Labour’s failures — open borders, grooming gangs, the cost of living, and the safety of British girls and women. That you consider this insufficiently hostile to the Tories says more about your own priorities than theirs.
On the committee appointment: the idea that Rupert Lowe cannot work cross-party to hold this dreadful Government to account without it being evidence of some grand conspiracy is absurd. Putting country before party is not betrayal — it is exactly what many voters claim to want.
Finally, your grand conclusion that Rupert Lowe “stands in the way of the radical change the country needs” is perhaps the most laughable claim of all. It is Rupert Lowe and Restore Britain who are demanding genuine remigration, an end to the grooming gang scandals, and real sovereignty — positions that go significantly further than Reform’s current offering.
The British people are not fools, Madam. They can see a coordinated hit-piece when one is presented to them. This was not honest commentary. This was an attempt to smear and discredit a man and a movement that refuses to bow to the Westminster game.
Yours in profound and thoroughly justified contempt,
A Gentleman of the Old School
#RestoreBritain #Reform
Rupert Lowe MP has proposed a comprehensive plan to support British military veterans by reallocating a fraction of the UK's foreign aid budget. His core policy proposals include:
Healthcare: Guaranteed fast-track NHS treatment and dedicated mental health support for veterans.
Housing: Ring-fenced housing priority funds for veterans across every local authority to eliminate veteran homelessness.
Employment: A dedicated fund to help former service personnel retrain and reintegrate into civilian society, specifically highlighting roles in police and immigration enforcement.
Lowe has formally submitted this proposal to the Government, arguing that British veterans should be prioritized over funding overseas projects. More details on his parliamentary initiatives can be tracked via Rupert Lowe MP's LinkedIn Post and the UK Parliament Written Questions Database.
For the veterans who feel politically homeless due to the treatment of our community by previous governments, rest assured this will not be the case under @RestoreBritain_. 🫡🇬🇧
Restore Britain is under brutal assault by the establishment.
Listen to me when I say this - they want us gone.
Everything will be thrown at us - false allegations, dishonest polling, media hysteria, vile personal attacks. They’ve already tried to put me in prison. It will all keep coming and coming. It is going to get a lot worse, the more support we gain.
The establishment is getting very nasty with us.
Good. It shows we are making progress.
Ask yourself why? Why do they want to destroy us? Why do they react with such fury whenever ordinary British people begin organising outside their control?
Because Restore Britain is not going to merely reform the establishment - we are going to destroy it. The system will be dismantled, the state will be torn apart and rebuilt as one that serves the people it always should have done - the British people.
The permanent Westminster machine that has grown rich and comfortable while Britain became poorer, weaker, more divided and less safe is biting back. Is that any surprise?
All-powerful bureaucrats who have lived the most comfortable life for decades in shadowy Westminster corridors will have it all taken from them.
Many will even go to prison.
That’s what will happen if Restore Britain takes power.
They do not want that. They will do everything to stop that from happening. We are already seeing it.
Reform, the Tories, Labour. With them, it all continues - their club is safe.
Different slogans. Same people. Same outcome. Same decline. Is it any wonder they hate Restore Britain so much?
The establishment understands it can accept a turquoise blue. Control it, use it.
They know they can’t with Restore Britain, and that is why they want us removed.
Because we are not here to ‘reform’. It is too late for that. The country is too far gone.
The old political consensus is dead. The system has failed too many people, in too many places, for too long.
We are here to restore Britain itself its borders, its safety, its confidence, its freedoms, its competence, its sense of who we are.
And no amount of smears or intimidation will stop us doing that.
Makerfield will show Britain the way.
If you want change. And I mean real change, radical change, unprecedented change.
Join us. Join the party. Join Restore Britain.
Get your country back.
In Auschwitz, my mother taught me three rules.
Not stories. Not prayers. Rules. The kind that kept you alive.
Rule one: Never make eye contact with a guard.
Rule two: Never show that you are sick.
Rule three: Never, ever, lose your bowl.
I was five years old. I memorized them the way other children memorize nursery rhymes.
The bowl was a small tin thing. Dented. Scratched. It held whatever thin soup they gave us once a day. If you lost your bowl, you had no bowl. If you had no bowl, you had no ration. If you had no ration, you understand.
I guarded that bowl with everything I had. I slept with it. I held it against my chest during roll call. I knew where it was every second of every day.
Then one morning, I fell into the latrine.
There is no delicate way to say this. The latrines in Auschwitz were wooden boards with holes cut into them over a pit. The holes were large. I was very small. I was in a hurry. I slipped.
I went in up to my neck.
The smell. The cold. The rats. I do not need to describe it. Your mind already knows.
My mother tried to pull me out. She could not. I was slippery and she had no strength. None of us had strength. We had not eaten properly in months. She called out. Other women came. Together they pulled me free. Someone found a hose. They sprayed me down in the cold air while I stood there shaking.
I did not cry. Rule number one in Auschwitz was the same rule everywhere, do not attract attention.
But I got sick. Very sick. The kind of sick that comes from rats and filth and cold water and a body that has nothing left to fight with.
And I remembered Rule Two, never show that you are sick.
I hid it from everyone. From the guards. From the other children. Even from my mother, because I knew if she knew, she would do something. And doing something in Auschwitz got you killed.
But someone saw. I do not know who. I do not know why they helped me instead of reporting me. I never knew.
They took me to a room, a makeshift hospital. I lay in a bed, a real bed, not a wooden bunk, for the first time since we had arrived.
I do not remember much of what happened next. The fever blurred everything. Days passed like smoke.
When I came out, I still had my bowl.
I had held it even in the latrine. Even in the fever. Even in the dark when I did not know where I was or what day it was.
My mother looked at me when I came back. She looked at the bowl. She did not say anything. She just nodded, the way she nodded when something had gone the way it needed to go.
People ask me what survival looks like.
I tell them, sometimes it looks like a five year old girl climbing out of a latrine in a death camp, covered in filth, shaking with cold, still holding her tin bowl.
Because she knew that the bowl was the difference between eating and not eating. Between living and not.
Because her mother had told her. And she had listened.
I am Tova Friedman. I fell into a latrine in Auschwitz at five years old.
I came out still holding my bowl.
Tova.
#NeverForget #Survival #DaughterOfAuschwitz #ShesStillHere #TheirNamesLiveOn
French police are now refusing to tackle boats leaving their shores because ARMED MEN are guarding them.
This is a military-style operation against us so it’s time to use the military against them.
There cannot be any more excuses.
One of the laziest arguments against Restore Britain is that we’re ‘splitting the vote’.
I entirely disagree. Voters are not the property of Farage or Reform.
Votes are earned. Not owned.
If people are leaving Reform and backing Restore Britain instead, that is not because we stole them.
It is because Reform failed to keep them.
That is politics.
And frankly, the argument itself reveals a deeply arrogant mindset...
The belief that millions of patriotic British people should simply fall into line blindly behind one party regardless of performance, principles or behaviour.
It treats men and women like children. It’s patronising, and the British people deserve better.
We’re all big enough and ugly enough to make our own minds up. And actually, in such a volatile electoral system - anything can happen. As we saw in Norfolk. When people voted for real change, they got it.
In Great Yarmouth, when it was apparent that we were going to win, I don’t remember Reform standing down any candidates. In fact, they threw more and more at the campaign in order to beat us - drafting in councillors from across the country.
The Tories accused Reform of splitting the vote at the last general, and they were rightly ignored. Look at how that has turned out. We now intend to do exactly the same, and more.
Restore Britain exists because huge numbers of people now believe Britain requires something more serious, more disciplined, more radical and more honest than what currently exists.
If Reform want those voters back, they are welcome to persuade them.
In the meantime, we are going to continue making our positive case.
If Brits don’t agree, they won’t vote for us. That’s fine. I don’t mind. But millions do, and millions will.
Great Yarmouth proved the model - we battered Reform.
If enough people vote for real change, they get it.
Muslims electing Muslims exactly because they’re Muslims - they then govern as Muslims, for Muslims. Demographic changes, birth rates and mass immigration mean that this is going to accelerate, rapidly.
What is our country going to look like in fifty years? Twenty years? Ten years? Honestly, think about that.
On current projections, Britain has an Islamic future.
That is just a fact. I don’t like it, in fact it terrifies me, but it’s true.
I do not want my grandchildren’s children to grow up in a Muslim Britain.
Tower Hamlets. Rochdale. Birmingham. Luton. Blackburn. Large parts of London. I could go on.
A sectarian nightmare. Deep divisions across the community in parts of those towns, in others it’s entirely united - united by Islam.
That is our future.
Unless we act, unless we organise, unless we vote.
There is still time.
Restore Britain is the only serious political party that has the courage to stand up for a Christian Britain.
We are the only political party with the courage to do what is necessary.
Mass immigration from Islamic countries will end, day one.
Banning halal slaughter, cousin marriage, the burqa/niqab.
Dominating Islamic prayer will be outlawed, along with any form of Sharia Law.
We will not tolerate the call to prayer being blared out across British towns.
The colonisation of our cities by foreign enclaves practising medieval practices will end.
The islamification of Britain will be halted and reversed.
That is what Restore Britain will do.
If you agree, then join us. Join the party, attend your local meetings, volunteer.
Help us. Because we need it, and nobody else is going to do it. Not Farage, not the Tories, certainly not Labour.
This is up to us now.
And there is one answer.
Restore Britain.
This is Mohammad Baghdadi "Baggy" Khan reporting to duty as a newly elected Councillor in the Halliwell ward, Bolton. He looks composed in his Lamborghini Huracán Spyder, worth £100,000-£200,000, it does 19-23 mpg.
He is a member of @TheGreenParty.
A Restore Britain Government will introduce specific laws to ensure that anyone forcibly blocking or interrupting our deportation process is prosecuted.
Those enabling illegal invaders will go to prison, and that very much includes 'charity' workers in Calais.
We are running on an unapologetic mass deportation platform.
If the British people put their trust in us, we will not tolerate desperate misfits and woke freaks working to undermine our democratic mandate.
We are anticipating a firm level of resistance to our deportation plans - so we will be unafraid to use the full force of the law to deliver the will of the British people.
If these lunatics padlock themselves to gates or glue themselves to the concrete, they will be forcibly removed and sent to prison.
The illegal population living in Britain will be rounded up, and they will be deported.
That is what the British people want.
Restore Britain will deploy the full power of the British state to achieve that aim.
A political party with the courage to do what needs to be done.
Restore Britain.