Andrew Griffith Speech to the Prosperity Institute — Thursday, 26 June 2025

I’ve come to speak to you today, because I am optimistic.

Maybe in the context of this terrible government that sounds strange.

In politics today, we hear less and less about optimism, just as we hear less and less about prosperity.

Politicians love to say that they believe our best and brightest days are ahead of us.

Successive Prime Ministers of this country have stood on the steps of Downing Street and said precisely that.

And yet we've seen life in this country get objectively worse.  Because for too long, too little has actually changed.

But I believe Britain can return to being a world-leader in innovation just as it was during the first industrial revolution.

British families can once again be amongst the wealthiest on the planet with tremendous purchasing power and the greatest life expectancies.

We can once again put a union jack shaped dent in the universe.

But none of that will happen without radical change and none of that will happen without the ferocious problem-solving power of private business.

So many of you in this room are here — and I suspect the Prosperity Institute only exists - because we are optimists.  

We Conservatives absolutely believe that things can get better, that decline is not inevitable and that the individual and that ideas matter.

In evolution, optimism is selected for because it encourages persistence, exploration, and risk-taking.

From exploring across unknown oceans to landing on the moon, it is optimists who venture into the unknown with belief in a better future.

I spent 25 years in business where I saw optimism at work every day.

The optimism that builds businesses, that turns capital into global scale companies or takes a product from one customer to millions or turns a first hire into 10,000 jobs.

And we can be optimistic about Britain with good reason.

Britain has huge strengths which even years of this government will not eradicate. 

The English language, the rule of law, deep and sophisticated financial markets, and a unique mix of the kind of businesses that thrive globally. 

Four of the world’s top ten universities. Technology, AI, life sciences, space, advanced manufacturing, creative industries, and financial and professional services.

Around the world, people still want what we produce. And even more - they want our skills, our capital and our ideas.

They may not be building railroads with British steel and powered by British coal anymore, but they’re building their countries futures with the help of British engineers, architects, technologists and financiers.

In every corner of this country there are people solving problems through the power of private enterprise. Doing things that seemed unimaginable until they weren’t.

That’s the spirit we need to bring to Government.

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Some say that Britain is in “late-stage” capitalism.  That this is all the growth we get and now it’s time to share out the pie.

This is fundamentally wrong.

We are living through the most rapid, most transformative period of technological change on this planet.

When humans walking on Mars no longer seems not impossible, but inevitable.

When the smartest person you know, is an app on your phone that speaks, thinks, and reasons – never more than a click away.

When diseases that once decimated nations are now cured in months or a few short years.

This country is at the forefront of many of these changes, and there is no reason we cannot capitalise on them.

There is no reason we should aim for just a few percent of GDP growth, rather than a GDP per capita of a hundred thousand pounds.

There is no reason that we cannot expect to cure Alzheimer’s or most cancers in our lifetimes.

We live in the most exciting age for human progress perhaps ever, and we should set our sights accordingly.

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I’m also optimistic because the problems we face right now are entirely tractable.  

We are not the only country to struggle with an aging population.

We are not the first to experience an extended period of low growth.

We are not alone in struggling to retain our best and brightest, to face high housing costs, or to have suffered a wave of low skilled, culturally challenging immigration.

Our friends in Poland suffered decades of socialism and are yet now set to overtake us on GDP per capita.

Singapore was once synonymous with mud and malaria, now it’s a beacon of efficient government.

And Britain itself, after the failures of the seventies, picked itself up, restoring our pride and growth in the eighties.

When the will is there, it can be done.

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But the process of change requires being honest about where you start. 

We're no longer the rich country that many think we are.

Measured by GDP per head, IMF statistics show that the UK has tumbled from being ranked around ninth in the world in 1990 to not even being in the top 20 today.

The state here consumes about 45% of our national income, up from levels seen in more dynamic economies like the US, where it's 35%, and very different from Singapore's 10%.

And under Labour, clearly, the state's share of that is only going up.

The comparison with other countries, that the UK political class loves to make, is with the G7.  But that is just another way of concealing our poor performance. 

With the exception of the United States, the G7 is a club of complacency, not competitiveness.

Our energy costs in the United Kingdom are four times higher than energy costs in the United States.  

We are competing in the veterans’ race when the real competition is the younger, fitter economies who are overtaking us.

For 37 years, the International Institute for Management Development, the IMD World Competitiveness Centre has published its flagship World Competitiveness Rankings.

The UK this year came 29th!

Just below Belgium, South Korea and Oman.

Belgium!

We've declined 11 places —we’ve declined 11 places since 2021 alone!

Ireland which shares our geography, our language and much of our history was 7th.

So, the next Conservative government will benchmark ourselves against some of the world's most dynamic economies - Singapore, Australia, UAE, India, Argentina, and Taiwan.  

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We know what doesn’t work.  

We see it every week in this Government.

The growth they promised is not materialising.  

The jobs they promised to increase are instead failing.

And instead of creating wealth, they’ve attacked those who create it – shooing away the golden geese, the entrepreneurs, the investors, the top talent that this country was famed for the world over.

Too many of our best and brightest young people — the future wealth creators — are exchanging Docklands for Dubai, Manchester for Miami or Leeds for Libson.

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But whilst things are undoubtedly getting worse under this government, we also have to be honest: much of this is not new.

Over 14 years Conservatives more than strayed from our purpose.  

Instead of confronting socialist ideas, we too often appeased them or implemented slightly milder versions.

As Kemi says, we talked right but governed left.

Instead of slashing the thicket of red tape, we became experts at growing it.

We allowed international agreements and the courts to hamstring even the most basic functions of government.

Too often we also gave in to the socialist idea that governments can and should solve all of society’s ills.  That whatever the case, “something must be done”.

That government is the solution — not as we believe — too often the problem.

In my view, Conservatives have no business regulating television adverts for yoghurt or porridge oats.

We had no business raising taxes to the highest levels in most people's lifetime.

And in my view, Conservatives have no business banning cigarettes for consenting adults or their choice of a petrol-powered cars.

But above all else, we ceased to be the party of business.

True Conservatives believe in the fusion between ideas and capital.  We believe in free markets.  And above all, we believe that it is private enterprise that creates growth, not government.  

For too long, we were not true Conservatives.

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So, I want to be clear: today the Conservative Party is under new leadership. 

And ss we develop ideas that help our economy to grow, at the heart will be an approach that unashamedly champions wealth creators and risk takers. 

We are not going to rush into a thousand detailed policies.  

We will take the time to think, and above all to listen.  

But what I can give you today, though, is some certainty as to the direction of travel.

Unlike in the past, a future Conservative government will actively reverse the damage this Government is doing.

We won’t accept the leftwards ratchet of a socialist government merely followed by a replacement that then maintains the status quo. 

Under Kemi’s leadership, we have already committed to scrapping the Family Business Death Tax and the Family Farm Death Tax.

Today, we go further and commit to a policy of dismantling of Labour’s job killing Unemployment Rights Bill.

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Far too few are aware of it, but I suspect this audience knows that it is 300 pages and 120,000 words of red tape which nobody asked for, no real business supports, and which every data point shows will cost billions of pounds and tens of thousands of jobs.

On a human scale, the price won’t be paid by those in the cosseted public sector or those already in work.

It will be paid by those looking for their shot.  Those seeking their first step on the career ladder.

Or the slightly different, who could have thrived in a supportive and purposeful workplace, but are now consigned to a lonely life on welfare because taking a chance on them becomes prohibitive.

Unemployment has risen every month of this Labour government.

We will repeal all of the chapters in the bill which hand enormous power to trade unions to grind our economy to a halt while removing the checks and balances on which there has been a consensus for decades —including during the whole of the Blair and Brown socialist governments.  What does this mean? 

•  Well, it means no to shorter notice for strikes, hampering businesses’ ability to prepare.

•  No to collective bargaining being forced on private businesses on the strength of a request potentially supported by just one employee in fifty.

•  It means reversing the trade union ‘right to roam’ in private business premises and IT systems, and no ‘swipe to strike’ electronic industrial action balloting with fewer controls.

•  And it means closing the left-wing ‘Fair Work Agency’ that will pursue lawfare against British businesses even when no employee has raised a complaint.

We will also repeal the parts of the Bill which destroy flexible working hours, confer day one rights that deter employers from taking a chance on young people and ban free speech in pubs, restaurants and public places.

We will consult and seek guidance in respect of the remainder of the bill.

Not from trade unions, not from an endless parade of government lawyers, but from an expert panel of those who create growth in this country.

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That’s why I can announce today, as part of our Policy Renewal exercise, that we are setting up the Backing Business Advisory Board.  

In a complete inversion of the Labour cabinet, everyone on it will have worked in or set up a business.  

With their guidance we will finally wield the scythe against the red tape that holds businesses back and makes us all poorer.

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We will also right another wrong.  We should never have jeopardised Britain’s growth by attacking wealth creators.

Since the coffee houses of London in the 1600s, the UK has always prospered by being where capital meets ideas.  Global wealth creators who have a choice but choose to come and reside here.

Now those conversations happen elsewhere: in Miami, Abu Dhabi and Milan. 

It will take a herculean effort to convince those who have fled Britain to return – confidence and consistency is everything

If Labour do not U-turn, as they should, we will all be poorer because of it.

That’s why I am committing today that as part of the policy review work we are already conducting, the Conservatives will draw up a genuinely world-beating offer for wealth creators.

Our arts, education and sports sectors, and charities all report private worries to me about the loss of patronage and support.

And we know that you don’t make the poor richer by making the rich poorer.

So we’ll not only undo the damage Labour has done, we will put forward a plan that makes this country the best in the world to invest and to build wealth.

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So, to sum up before I take any questions:

The work to once again make the Conservative Party the party of business begins today.  

There is no way back to government without this.

It won’t be easy, and it will not be done with sugar rush or press release politics.

Instead, we will do the hard work needed to be worthy of your trust.

We will bring a relentless and serious-minded focus on how to remove regulations that impede growth, especially the heavy cost of compliance.

How do we make HMRC a partner, not predator, of business and the self-employed?

How do we reimagine how we take risk in this country and where our increasingly risk averse attitude prevents innovation?

We will have to be radical on plans to roll back government.  Britain today has more quangos than unicorn tech companies. We need fewer bodies who see it as their central purpose to say no. 

Instead of one department of efficiency, we will expect every single minister to be their own Javier Milei, wielding the chainsaw against waste with the force that taxpayers rightly expect.

Some of these ideas will come from the lessons we learned the hard way in government. 

Many others from copying the success of other countries around the world.

But these policies will need to be backed by detailed plans and even a team of potential people ready to show up and deliver them.

No more “trust me” pledges that end up never being put into practice. 

That can be the difference between a renewed Conservative Party and others.

I started today by saying that I am an optimist, but I am only optimistic because I know that we can do this.  

I know that we can return Britain to prosperity, and I know that we can make the future something that excites, rather than frightens.

We have one chance, ladies and gentlemen, and we are going to take it.  

Thank you.