2024 was supposed to be the year the UK turned a corner, both economically and politically. There would be an election (which happened, earlier than expected actually); we would get a new government (which we did) and the economy would shake off the last remaining incumbrance of the pandemic and surge forward (which it didn’t). But for the self-employed, it was another flat year in terms of the overall growth of the sector and precious little progress on the issues that really matter. What should we expect from 2025?

It may not feel like it right now, but politically, things are likely to be fairly stable this year. The Prime Minister need not worry about a general election until 2029 and his government has a healthy majority, so it is free to push forward with its agenda. 

Despite this, there are pressures on the Labour Government. The polls suggest Starmer is staggeringly unpopular. There are local elections in May which have the potential to embarrass the government. The Assisted Dying Bill will continue to work its way through Parliament and will continue to put considerable strain on Cabinet cohesion. And notably, Elon Musk seems intent on calling out what he sees as Starmer’s inadequacies on his social media platform (which we are still not quite ready to refer to as anything other than ‘Twitter’ – maybe that will change in 2025 too).

Things could get more interesting for the opposition parties. If Reform do well, as many predict, in the local elections, they will establish themselves as genuine force in UK politics. This is a problem for anyone who doesn’t like Farage and his brand, and it’s a very big problem for the Conservatives who might lose a lot of votes to Reform and maybe even their position as the primary ‘right-of-center’ party. Like them or loathe them, one interesting point to note about Reform is that their 2024 manifesto included a pledge to scrap IR35, which is why IPSE has already met with their MPs. Definitely a party to watch in 2025.

The Conservatives have a new-ish leader in Kemi Badenoch. Badenoch built her leadership campaign around the so-called culture wars and we are yet to fully understand her position on business and self-employment. She also hasn’t really addressed what went wrong for the Tories in the 2024 General Election and how she intends to win back the votes they need to get back into power. IPSE has already called on the Conservatives to show much more robust support for the self-employed than they did under Rishi Sunak. Our Chair, Rob Light, penned a piece for Conservative Home calling on the Party to reassert itself as the political home of entrepreneurship and address its previous failure to ally itself with the bedrock of Britain’s business population: the self-employed.

We must not forget about the Liberal Democrats. They now have 72 seats in Parliament – not so many fewer than the Conservatives’ 121. It’s nowhere near enough votes to force through legislation – only the government can do that – but it’s a sizeable block that could make a difference on key issues. 

The Lib Dems have consistently voiced support for the self-employed and could be persuaded to adopt pro-self-employment policies if they think there are votes in it for them. Their manifesto included pledges to end the loan charge and review IR35, which demonstrates they are at least listening to our sector. 2025 could be the year that the Liberal Democrats establish themselves as the party of self-employment, if we can persuade them to make it a priority.

Away from party politics, the big question is the economy and whether we will see a return to significant and sustained growth. The Office of Budget Responsibility predict the economy will grow by 2% this year before falling back to 1.8% in 2026 and 1.5% in 2027. Not particularly significant then, though arguably sustained. Of course, these are just forecasts – we’ll have to wait and see what will really happen.

We hope we might see a return to growth for the self-employed sector. It remined stagnant at 4.2million last year, well short of it’s pre-pandemic peak of 5.1 million in early 2020. If we are serious about economic growth, we need to see growth in this sector. The self-employed are the worker bees that drive the economy forward, allowing larger businesses to de-risk hiring, be more innovative and cope with peaks and troughs in demand. 

It’s all a bit ‘chicken and egg’ – a thriving economy would no doubt create the space for more self-employment to flourish; a flourishing self-employed sector would certainly spur the economy on – but the government should be thinking about how to harness the latent entrepreneurial talent that has been all too quiet in recent years. 

IPSE’s task is to get all the political parties talking about self-employment. If we can do that, we might see some policies that actually encourage people to work for themselves. If we can achieve that we should see the economy growing. And if that happens, 2025 will be a good year.