Hair salons like mine are the canaries within the coalmine for financial bother forward. Reeves’ tax hikes threaten to wreck us all: Top stylist MICHAEL VAN CLARKE on why he is barring each Labour MP…

For nearly 40 years, I’ve welcomed thousands of people into my hairdressing salon in Marylebone, central London.

I’ve styled the hair of rock stars, film stars, heads of state, politicians and many members of our Royal Family – including the late Princess Diana – as well as many regular clients from all walks of life.

But now I’ve decided to do something I’ve never done before – turn customers away. Just like hundreds of pubs, restaurants and other businesses taxed to the edge of insolvency by our clueless Government, I’ve resolved that if a Labour Cabinet minister asks for a cut and blow dry – and yes, they do come in from time to time – I will quietly but firmly tell them they’re not welcome and show them the door.

Some may think I’ve got nothing to complain about since the price of a haircut at our luxury salon starts at £100 and can be far more expensive. But hairdressing is a hands-on industry with high fixed costs. Our salon employs about 50 people who need to be paid, on top of rent, equipment costs and a host of other expenses.

But what makes life particularly difficult for businesses like mine, and indeed for almost everyone in the struggling hospitality sector, are the dozens of taxes we have to pay just to operate as a business.

Hair salon owner Michael Van Clarke has resolved that if a Labour Cabinet minister asks for a cut and blow dry, he will quietly but firmly tell them they’re not welcome

The celebrity hairstylist says his young staffers have told him the crippling tax on their salaries has killed their aspirations of working in a salon when they can earn the same from home

Most of our customers are all too aware of the 20 per cent VAT on their bill. But the bulk of the costs the Government loads on to businesses are invisible to the general public.

Labour’s second cash-grabbing Budget in November which saw a phasing out of the vital Covid-era discount on business rates coincided with a huge rise in the rateable value of most business properties that will see many hotels, restaurants and hair salons pay almost double the level of tax they faced in the years after the pandemic – from which many businesses still haven’t fully recovered.

Then there’s the 15 per cent employer’s contribution to National Insurance, on top of the eight per cent every employee has to pay. There’s the ridiculous ‘green levy’ businesses have to pay on top of our energy bills – mine are already high because running a salon, with all the electricity needed for our hairdryers and straighteners, is an energy-intensive business.

There are also licences, prohibitively expensive parking taxes – indeed some of my clients end up paying more on the congestion charge and parking than they do for a blow dry.

But worst of all, I believe, is the stealth tax grab that means our salon staff are paying even more income tax because the thresholds have utterly failed to keep pace with inflation.

For four decades, I’ve taken immense pride in the knowledge that my salon offers young hopefuls a complete career path – training them up to become confident, talented and successful hairdressers.

But I now see the effects of Reeves’ ruinous measures all around me. My young staffers tell me that the crippling tax on their salaries has killed their aspirations of working in a salon when they can earn the same money doing a bit of cash-in-hand hairdressing from home while paying next to no tax.

The cumulative effect of all this is putting the future of hairdressing salons, as well as the pubs, restaurants and hotels that make our towns and city centres so vibrant, at risk. In fact, I can see London’s West End going downhill day by day as more hospitality businesses restrict their hours or days of operation to save costs, or in the worst cases, close for good.

This should be a serious warning sign for the Government. Their tax rises across the board mean people have less money in their pockets and are unwilling to spend on things that are not absolutely necessary.

Not long ago, the Treasury used to keep a close eye on a small but telling statistic they regarded as the canary in the coal mine for economic trouble ahead – known as the ‘mean time between haircuts’ or ‘MTBH’. 

According to this metric, when people start to stretch out the time between getting trims and have fewer haircuts a year, their spending power, and more generally their confidence in the economy, dips.

I believe that measure still holds true today. Even in my own salon, many regular clients are waiting longer between visits. Anecdotally, the picture seems the same across the industry.

I know it might sound trivial to some, but I think this is terrible for all of us. I’ve always believed that hairdressing salons are a form of private, rather luxurious community centres.

They are places where clients can come and chat to people they know, and after a few hours they leave looking and feeling better – more confident, better groomed and with a spring in their step.

For many, it’s a matter of personal pride.

All this is being sacrificed for the sake of a failed collectivist ‘tax and spend’ ideology that works against the grain of human nature.

Labour seems to believe that if they tax businesses until the pips squeak, they can somehow make everyone better off, when actually the opposite is true.

Only businesses, like ours, can create wealth. Governments merely spend it. Their policies appear to have emerged from student debating societies and are being imposed on the country by people who don’t have the faintest clue about the realities of running a business.

The Government talks relentlessly about growth and wealth creation, but strangles it at birth by persecuting the very entrepreneurs who are the only real engines of the economy. They are the risk takers who collectively employ millions of people. Together, they pay the taxes upon which our huge welfare state depends.

I’m old enough to remember that the same policies of tax and spend which Labour is pursuing today failed dismally in the 1970s. Socialist policies always end with the same result – a sclerotic, statist society where business struggles to survive, let alone thrive.

Margaret Thatcher managed to turn that around by supporting entrepreneurs, the two per cent of us whose drive and vision actually produces wealth. But over the last 25 years, her message has dimmed and Britain has reverted to its bad old ways.

The result is that there has been reduced investment in business and no real economic growth. While it’s easy to think that this should only concern economists, not ordinary people, its effects are very real. We will all see the results in our bank accounts.

If you strip out the impacts of inflation, it becomes clear that there has been no real increase in after-tax wages for a quarter of a century. That is a catastrophic failure of government and a betrayal of everything that the Labour Party says it stands for – which is primarily increasing the standard of living for ordinary working people.

As long as this Government continues to persecute entrepreneurs and punish aspiration by loading more taxes on to those who dare to be successful, then I shall continue to politely tell members of the Labour Cabinet that they are not welcome in my salon.

And as I show them to the door, I shall quietly but firmly tell them why, in my own discreet version of what football managers call the ‘hairdryer treatment’.

• Michael Van Clarke has run a successful hairdressing salon in Marylebone for 38 years. He also has a podcast, Heads Together, with his brother Nicky Clarke who is also a celebrity hairdresser.