It is in all our interests that politics remains an attractive proposition for people who have worked in business writes Kiki McDonough.

Four decades ago, I sat down with a pencil and a blank piece of paper thinking about my first jewellery design. The mood in the country in the mid-1980s was a hugely dynamic one. Margaret Thatcher was in Number Ten encouraging entrepreneurs to take risks and go for it – it felt like the sky was the limit.

Sadly, somewhere along the way we seem to have lost some of that entrepreneurial spirit. I wonder whether I would be able to build a successful global brand from scratch in the way that I did if I was starting out today.

I know six young people who have already packed up and gone. Four of them ran businesses: one has gone to the US, one to Portugal, one to France and one to Italy. These young people are our future and we need them here. It would help if we had a government that had the first clue about business, or at least listened to those that do. 

Loading firms with more costs with a National Insurance hike and hundreds of pages of new regulation with the Employment Rights Bill is not working out........

© City A.M.