If you were designing an organisation to run a modern country, you wouldn’t design Number 10. The fragmentation, endless meetings and lack of accountability would be unthinkable in a successful business, says David Buttress

Walking through the door of Number 10 Downing Street was one of the proudest moments of my life. I grew up in a council house, raised by a single mother, and never imagined I would one day be helping the Prime Minister tackle the cost-of-living crisis.

It was an extraordinary privilege. Number 10 has an almost magical power to bring people together. Make a call from Downing Street and people answer. They listen. They want to help.

But I also discovered something deeply frustrating. If you were designing an organisation to run a modern country, you wouldn’t design Number 10. The fragmentation, endless meetings and lack of accountability would be unthinkable in a successful business.

I remember sitting through a roundtable involving 28 important people, including senior politicians and business leaders. Everyone had their say, then everyone went away. But I asked one simple question: what will be different tomorrow because we met today? The answer was virtually nothing.

That experience crystallised a wider concern about how Britain is run. We have become a country that talks endlessly about growth while systematically discouraging the people who deliver it.

And nowhere is that contradiction more damaging than in our attitude towards wealth creators.

I helped build Just Eat from a struggling start-up into a business worth £5.5bn. We nearly went bust twice. We worked extraordinary hours, we took enormous risks and we created jobs in Britain – even when it might have made more financial sense to create them elsewhere.

I am proud of that. Why shouldn’t I be? Yet increasingly, successful entrepreneurs are made to feel that their achievements are something to apologise for. When did ambition become a crime?

The highest-earning one per cent of taxpayers contribute roughly a third of income tax revenues. The top 10 per cent contribute around 60 per cent. These are the people helping to fund our hospitals, schools, pensions and public services. So why are we sending them the message that we don’t particularly want them here?

I work with investors and entrepreneurs who are genuinely relocating to Milan, Portugal and elsewhere. These aren’t theoretical threats, people really are leaving. And when they go, we don’t just lose their taxes. We lose their investment, their businesses, the salaries they pay and the opportunities they might have created for the next generation.

Worse still, think what this tells a young person growing up in a council house today.

My mother had a simple philosophy: no excuses. Work hard, take responsibility and get on with it. That mindset helped change my life. I want every young person in Britain to share that same self-belief, but instead, we’re creating a culture in which success is resented rather than celebrated, while too many young people are left without work, training or purpose.

This is where Andy Burnham has a choice to make. And I’m worried he’s already wasting his best opportunity to make it.

Continuing a failing strategy

He arrived in Downing Street with enormous political capital, a fresh mandate for change and the ability to take difficult decisions. Yet his first Budget was painfully timid. A C-plus Budget when Britain needed something bold. He has talked about a ten-year economic plan, but any CEO will tell you that having a long-term vision is useless if you squander the moment when you have the power to deliver it.

Worse, he looks to be continuing the very policies and attitudes that have driven Britain’s wealth creators away. A new leader cannot simply inherit a failed strategy and carry on implementing it. No successful business would tolerate that.

Burnham is a good communicator. He should use that skill to win the argument for growth, not hide behind the manifesto of his predecessor. He should tell Britain that wealth creation is something to celebrate, not punish.

And he should back those words with action. Make business investment fully tax-deductible. Stop penalising employers for creating jobs. Fix planning, accelerate energy connections and let businesses build.

His message should be brutally simple: growth, growth, growth.

Above all, he should start asking Britain’s most successful entrepreneurs a different question: what would persuade you to invest more here?

Not how much more can we take from you. Not how can we make your life harder. But how can we help you create more jobs, more businesses and more prosperity?

Because Britain doesn’t need fewer successful people. It desperately needs more.

David Buttress is former CEO of Just Eat. Listen to him speak to Guto Harri and David Davis on their Politics Unleashed podcast