The British government has, apparently, told the Federation of Small Businesses that it will consider abolishing up to 22,000 business regulations.

The first response from any right minded person will be “What the ...? How on earth did we ever get in a position of having so many regulations in the first place?”

If the government will consider abolishing this number we ponder how many there are in total – 40,000, 50,000?

But, don’t get too excited. As ever, the devil is in the detail. First, the government has said it will abolish up to 22,000 regulations. It could only abolish one regulation and still, technically, comply with this undertaking.

Second, regulations will only be abolished if officials do not find good reason for them to stay. These are same officials who introduced the regulations in the first place. No doubt in the crazy, alternative reality in which they inhabit there were – and more importantly, remain – so called good reasons for all this nonsense.

As optimists we’d like to believe the government. As realists we know this is just another cynical exercise in vote grabbing that will have desperately little economic effect.

The government should realise at this stage of the electoral cycle – the next election is over 4 years away – populist measures are a waste of time, as they will be long forgotten come voting day. Instead, now is the time to do what it is essential, though possibly politically unpopular, to do.

Two years ago we predicted the recovery would be a jobless recovery. As with so many of our predictions, we have been proved right. Economic recovery, and job creation too, will not come about by silly, vote grabbing gestures.

Tomorrow sees the annual UK Budget, trailed as the most pro-growth budget in a generation. If we are to see genuine economic and job growth the government has got to take real action to decimate the swath of anti-business employee rights legislation, abolish jobs taxes and provide meaningful incentive to risk takers.

Alas, tomorrow looks like it’ll turn into just another disappointment.

Businesses around the world – not just in America – are concerned about the continuing listlessness of the US economy.

This is one area where “Change” really is necessary. Yet Tuesday’s elections exposed how vacuous that word has become. It was Barack Obama’s slogan in 2008 – but this year it was the Republicans who were using it. Of course, what Mr Obama meant by “Change” and what the Republicans mean by the same word are two very different things, but what really matters to those of us who have to deal with the practical consequences is that major change of any sort is unlikely for the next two years.

Here are the hard facts. If the Republicans, who now control the House of Representatives, try to implement their idea of “Change”, it will be squashed by President Obama, who has power of veto, and by his Democratic allies who still control the Senate. If, on the other hand, Mr Obama still wants to push his own idea of “Change”, it is most unlikely to get through the Republican House.

It would be nice to think that this might encourage Mr Obama and the Republicans to work together for the common good. President Reagan was often able to charm Democratic Congressmen to vote his way in the 1980s, and President Clinton worked well with the Republicans on deficit reduction and welfare reform in the 1990s. However, there is little inter-party goodwill left in Washington these days. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the way Mr Obama rammed healthcare reform through Congress, it left him with no friends on the Republican side.

The irony is that all this might help Mr Obama. President Clinton faced a similar situation in 1994: after a disastrous start to his Administration, he lost control of Congress to the Republicans – and thereby saved his Presidency. A hostile Congress forced him to the political centre – where his Administration became more successful – while simultaneously giving him someone to blame. His party’s defeat in 1994 led directly to his own re-election in 1996.

Tuesday’s result has therefore made Mr Obama’s re-election more likely in 2012. However, unless he comes to a second term with a new economic agenda, real “Change” will be delayed for another four years. In the meantime, America’s enterprise culture will probably deliver a degree of recovery – in spite of the government rather than because of it: at least the squabbling among the politicians will mean they will have less chance to make things worse. However, all that time America will be losing her competitiveness, and the shift of global economic power across the Pacific will continue.

The top priority of Britain's incoming Coalition Government should have been to restore economic stability and create the conditions for a meaningful return to growth.

And, as everyone keeps telling us, the power horse of that economic growth will be small businesses.

Or will it?

Today sees the enforcement of the euphemistically named Equality Act, one of the greatest works of stupidity from the current government's economically illiterate predecessor.

Lady GaGa at a US equalities rally

Here are some of its implications:

• Employers can no longer ask prospective employees about their health. Being sufficiently well enough to work is a pre-condition of doing any job but we are no longer allowed to ask!
• You can bring a discrimination case against your employer just because you assess yourself as having been offended by a conversation others are having. Not just a conversation – any conduct you deem is unwanted to you. Your employer has no control over this but remains liable nevertheless.
• Employers must positively discriminate in favour of ‘minority groups’. Does being an employer count as a minority group? How far away are we from having lawyers assess every employment application, sit in on every employment interview and promotional panel?

So obviously economically self-defeating is this piece of legislation we do not need to spell out why. Whereas there is a case to argue that it is wrong to discriminate on matters which have no impact on someone’s ability to do their job, this legislation manifestly undermines British business’s ability to be competitive, forcing it to recruit people incapable of doing their job.

Now, in case we ourselves are discriminated against by being called heartless bastards, we do agree that this daft legislation has noble intentions. But the problems it seeks to address – where they are genuine rather than imagined – are society's problems.

It should be for society to bear the burden of all this fairness. Indeed it will, but not as intended. The cost of all this regulation, while providing a ginormous trough for lawyers, consultants and regulators to stick their parasitic snouts into, will be borne by business, not society as a whole. In effect, another huge tax on business and a tax that will fall disproportionately on small and entrepreneurial ventures.

The government is looking to small business to create the millions of jobs needed for economic recovery. Way before this ridiculous move we were predicting the Jobs Crunch. This particular contributor long ago decided never to take on an employee in present day Britain, not because of the cost but because he has an enterprising nature and doesn’t want to spend his time at work acting as an über-administrator.

Many will now follow suit. Others less savvy will see their businesses go under with the sheer weight not just of the regulatory cost but the time costs too. Time that should be spent generating wealth.

It is this impediment to economic growth which will be the burden society as a whole ends up paying.

Our previous blog post lamented the lack of a representative voice for small business. Not even we could have imagined their impotency in fighting this move – a job left to a columnist from the left-of-centre, generally anti business, Guardian newspaper.