Chris Rowe

(Bookies can be wrong, but they're never biased and often very accurate — see the Wisdom of Crowds)

Not making a judgement on the govt here either way, but I think it's almost as if twitter and reddit aren’t a reliable barometer of the wider public’s views…

From what I'm seeing (from my limited perspective), is business owners being more worried about their livelihood than having a *potentially* worse NHS in 5-10years.

Another was the minimum wage and zero-hour contracts. One of the chaps owns a coffee shop, said his accountants told him he wouldn't be able to stay in business without raising prices by 30% and relying on the same number of transactions — no mean feat.

Another was proposed inheritance tax being well above current capital gains (e.g. transferring your estate the day before you died vs the day after would be £100-200k cheaper)

One of the biggest complaints was JC planned to charge business owners more in corp tax and then expect them to be okay with an increase in capital gains. CG is 'low' to offset the fact that money has already been taxed under CT for small businesses.

By which I'm saying: they're smart and compassionate people (perhaps even by Labour voters' standards) who happily pay their fair share, but struggled to reconcile some of Corbyn's better policies with the detrimental aspects of how he'd be attempting to pay for them.

One is on the board of charities (plural), another gives his services to mental health charities for free, one massively discounts his products to disabled veterans and goes out of his way to hire injured vets, and only one voted for Brexit.

I’ve spoken to more than half a dozen people who own businesses today about the election, and not one voted Labour.