After the many difficult years which businesses in Scotland and throughout the UK have had to endure, one of the last things they would have wanted was to find themselves at the mercy of politicians.

However, there could hardly have been a greater gulf between the stability and predictability of operating environment that businesses desire and the world in which they have found themselves.

At home, businesses face the major challenge of a hike in employers’ national insurance contributions by the Labour Government projected to raise £25 billion a year, effective from April 6.

Of course, they have been dealing with many other challenges in terms of UK political decisions in recent years, not least those arising from the Tories’ hard Brexit. This continues to do great damage to the UK economy, as it has done for years now, and of course by extension to the public finances.

We should not overlook the effect of the hard Brexit in producing a situation in which Labour, which has bound itself with similar fiscal rules to the Tories, has considered it necessary to bring in that extra £25bn a year through the employers’ NI hike.

Yet Labour continues to embrace its self-imposed “red lines” of not rejoining the European Union, single market or even the customs union. This means the UK continues to be deprived of frictionless trade with its biggest trading partner and of what was the immensely valuable free movement of people between........

© Herald Scotland