Rachel Reeves plans to create a “British Silicon Valley” between Oxford and Cambridge. Forgive me if I don’t get excited. This is yet another example of political grandstanding masquerading as visionary policymaking. It’s a headline-grabber, designed to make us forget that Britain’s economy is on life support. But economic growth doesn’t come from Ministers talking about it on breakfast television. It happens when people aren’t shackled, taxed, and bossed about by a bloated state apparatus.

The idea of a “Silicon Valley” in a country weighed down by some of the highest taxes in the developed world is laughable. Add to that the endless web of regulations that make it easier to give up than to open a business, and you can see why this is doomed from the start. And let’s not forget the absurd net zero policies that have made electricity so expensive that anyone trying to run a server farm or an AI lab would have to be mad—or already bankrupt. But at least the billionaires in the City of London casinos are doing well, trading carbon credits and green bonds, and pocketing subsidies for wind farms that barely spin.

Reeves and her colleagues seem to believe that government decrees can create innovation. They can’t. Economic growth arises organically when people are free to take risks and reap the rewards of their efforts—not when they’re taxed into submission and micromanaged by bureaucrats who wouldn’t know a profit margin from a pie chart. The Labour Ministers will only enable this process of organic growth that benefits ordinary working people by downsizing itself. Scrap the taxes that strangle small businesses. Cut regulations that make everything slower, harder, and more expensive. Slash the green policies that line the pockets of a few insiders while driving everyone else into poverty. In short, they need to cut taxes by at least three-fifths and let people breathe.

But, of course, they won’t do that. Instead, they’ll pour billions into white elephant projects, hiring consultants to “develop a roadmap” and holding endless press conferences to talk about “strategic investments.” Nothing will come of it, except perhaps a few more office parks and overpriced cafés that no one will use. If this Government really wants to help the economy, the Ministers should lock themselves in their offices and spend their days watching Pornhub. At least then they wouldn’t be actively making things worse.

Britain doesn’t need some Potemkin “innovation hub.” It needs a radical reduction in the size of the state. Until that happens, Reeves can talk about Silicon Valleys all she likes—it won’t make a scrap of difference.