Should the general election worry me?

Pioneer’s Danny Williams answers your questions. This month: “I run a small but successful window manufacturing business in the south west. Rather than advice, I am interested in your opinion on how you believe the general election will affect businesses such as ours.

Previous recent elections have resulted in a pause rather than any serious disruption to the home improvements sector generally. Mr & Mrs Smith love their homes and are pretty much addicted to lavishing time and money on them, thankfully. I have just finished reading about Velux Windows latest Home Improvement Survey, which shows that nearly six in ten UK homeowners are planning to carry out improvements to their castles, worth an astonishing £51 billion (which makes me wonder why windows and doors receive a paltry £4+ billion, according to our industry pundits).

Of course, this was carried out way before Theresa May’s announcement to call a snap general election and I too wonder how this will affect things. My belief is that the result of the election that will cause a wobble in the Velux survey results rather than any long-term spasm, but that is a view based upon what I believe to be the most likely outcome.

In short, if Teresa May and the Tories get back in and the status quo is restored then homes will continue to be improved by owners that generally, simply want a quiet life and one in which they can live with their families harmoniously and without any major upheaval to disrupt them.

Should Mr Corbyn and his colleagues in the Labour Party find themselves in power, for me it would be a bigger shock than The Donald taking the keys to the White House. Then I believe that we would face a mega loss of business as people came to terms with the result and with worries about how such an enormous about face will affect our economy. This is not a rant against Labour as such, just a recognition of the disruption of change.

If the LibDems get in, the water will become fouled by the cross-political issue of Brexit and the down-in-the-swamp electioneering that typified that horrible campaign and which is bound to rear its ugly head once again. Too many will focus on Brexit rather than on what is right for Britain.  

In my humble opinion, it is less the actual politics of homeowners that will affect their decision to improve or not, than their core confidence and intuitive sense of wellbeing. And it is continuity and relative stability that creates that rather than any particular stream of political dogma.

In summary therefore, it is change that we must fear rather than politics – although of course, they will go hand in hand this time round.