LOOK around Britain today, and you’d be hard-pressed to find any ordinary people who reckon the economy is on the up.

And yet, with just weeks to go before his first Budget, Chancellor John Healey is reportedly claiming he didn’t know how bad things are.

Grafters and small businesses are feeling the squeeze Credit: Getty Images

No matter the warm words PM Andy Burnham uses in his TikToks, it doesn’t matter if, in the end, taxes just keep going up Credit: POOL/AFP via Getty Images

We should all be very worried — but small businesses and the self-employed most of all.

Apparently, two years of weekly cabinet meetings sitting next to then Chancellor Rachel Reeves didn’t do much for him.

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Two tax-raising budgets in which he sat on the Labour front bench simply passed him by.

The hundreds of thousands of jobs gone under Labour, the closed businesses, the families hammered by tax rises? John Healey didn’t know.

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Of course, I don’t believe him.

But I do believe that he, as was the way with Rachel Reeves, is saying this because he is too weak to tell the truth.

Labour’s problem is that they don’t get business, they won’t cut out-of-control welfare, and so all that they have left is to raise taxes.

Nowhere is that betrayal felt more than among the five million small businesses in this country, and the four million self- employed.

They are the bedrock of our economy — the plumbers, electricians, hairdressers and brickies who get up early every day, show up and get the job done.

Labour ministers could learn something.

But instead of backing these people, it looks like Healey is dead set on hammering them again, with his Budget on October 28.

He’ll do it the same way Reeves did — with lofty words about growth and responsibility while, in truth, snuffing out the last signs of life in our economy.

Because as Conservatives know, you grow an economy from the bottom up, not the top down.

If every small business hired just one extra person, that would be millions of jobs across the country added.

Instead, Labour have taxed those jobs, making that all but impossible.

That attitude is what we should all fear.

No matter the warm words Healey might use in his speeches, or PM Andy Burnham in his TikToks, it doesn’t matter if, in the end, taxes just keep going up.

If everyday life for families just gets even more expensive.

The only winners in Burnham’s Britain are the residents of Benefits Street

Chancellor John Healey is reportedly claiming he didn’t know how bad things are Credit: Betty Laura Zapata/PA Wire

If those who work hard know that the only winners in Burnham’s Britain are the residents of Benefits Street.

Small businesses and the self-employed are already feeling the pinch.

They’re spending 44 hours and £4,500 a year just on working out how to comply with tax rules, before they’ve spent a single penny paying their actual taxes.

One in three small businesses surveyed expects to shrink, sell up or close over the next year.

Over the last year, only a minority increased their revenues, while the majority saw them fall.

In short, it’s a slow-mo disaster. And it’s not getting any better.

Since September 1, HMRC has mandated Making Tax Digital — better known as Making Tax Difficult.

It means the self-employed and landlords will have to file four separate reports to HMRC every year, using expensive software, before they can even file their actual tax return.

That is to say nothing of the chaos the IR35 tax legislation continues to cause for those who choose to work as contractors rather than employees, for entirely legitimate reasons.

In short, small businesses and the self-employed need someone who will back them, not another budget horror show.

We all do.

That’s why, today, I am pledging to put small businesses and the self-employed at the heart of my plans as Shadow Chancellor.

Healey may not care for them, or he may not know they exist, but the next Conservative government will treat them with the respect they deserve.

In the meantime, Healey should make their lives easier.

He owes it to hard-pressed taxpayers to pause Making Tax Difficult and find a better way to digitise the tax system — one that doesn’t cost the self-employed even more time and money.

But he should also end the pain — and we cannot wait until Budget Day.

Healey should promise today that he will not raise taxes on small businesses and the self-employed.

Indeed, he should not raise taxes on anybody.

The Conservatives have already set out billions worth of savings that will allow us to pay down debt, fund defence — and cut taxes.

Because we get it. Britain has paid enough. We are already facing the highest tax burden on record.

Now it’s Westminster’s turn to do their job and make the tough choices needed to bring down spending, borrowing and taxes.

Conservatives are the party of business.

We didn’t always get it right in the past but we know what it is to run a business, to be self-employed and to make tough choices.

Under Kemi Badenoch’s leadership that is exactly what we will do.