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Hello and welcome to Political Thinking. This was the week when the impact of the war in the

Middle East really came home. Higher energy bills, higher prices at the pumps and in the shops,

higher interest rates than looked likely just a few

weeks ago. My guest on political thinking is the shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith,

once the youngest chief financial officer of any major British company.

He made many millions of pounds when that company, the media giant Sky, was sold to a US firm.

He became a Conservative MP.

As an ally of Boris Johnson, he also became director of the number 10 policy unit.

He believes that the only way out of our economic woes is to learn from business and to slash the regulations which hold them back.

He's even posed with a chainsaw to make his point.

Andrew Griffith, welcome to political thinking.

Thank you, Nick.

I know you've come here fresh from speaking

to a business group. You nodded along at that introduction. Do you feel we're at a moment when businesses,

households are beginning to say, wow, this was about to hit us? Yeah, I do think that that is the

motion that people have this week. I mean, look, they felt fragile for a while, in fairness. And I don't want to say everything was about the 5th of July 2024, but clearly, you know, that has made things from a business perspective, quite a lot worse. They've had their pockets picked on things like national insurance. They do feel there's more red tape when they try and hire people. For those who don't memorize the date of a general election, the 5th of July is, of course, the general election.

But how much is the war now making people?

...