British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Gordon Brown, yesterday laid down a blueprint for an entrepreneurial, share-owning Britain that bore a close resemblance to the American dream.
His speech underlined the distance today's Labour party has travelled from its leftwing and class-conscious roots.
"We want to encourage those who start with nothing and who, in the past, thought they could never reach higher or rise far - and tell them too that there is not only a chance to do better but no limit on their ambitions for themselves and their children," Mr Brown told members of parliament.
Mr Brown was delivering the annual pre-Budget speech, which sets out the government's economic assumptions and new spending plans for the forthcoming year.
Mr Brown raised his GNP growth forecast for the current year to 1.75 per cent from a range of 1 per cent to 1.5 per cent, and boosted that for next year to between 2.5 per cent and 3 per cent.
He forecast a public sector surplus of £3.5 billion sterling (€5.46 billion) in the current fiscal year to next March, followed by a further £3 billion in the year after, a big turnaround from the £3 billion deficit he had previously pencilled in for both those years.
With around 18 months to two years to go before the next general election, Mr Brown proposed tax breaks designed to foster a "pro-investment, pro-competition, pro-enterprise Britain". He pointed out that Britain still had only half the rate of start-ups and share ownership as the US.
Mr Brown pledged to cut capital gains tax from 40 per cent to 10 per cent on investments in businesses held by entrepreneurs and managers for five years.
He also offered tax relief to large companies investing in start-ups and said he would reform employee share ownership rules to make all shares held by employees for five years exempt from income and capital gains tax.
In a nod to the powerful anti-trust tradition in the US, Mr Brown confirmed the British government's plans to increase the powers of the Office of Fair Trading, Britain's relatively feeble competition watchdog, to tackle cartels.
He even used the US term "trust-busting" to describe new weapons which will allow the OFT to address anti-competitive behaviour more aggressively, including the power to impose fines of up to 30 per cent of a company's sales.
The government would also consider how to ensure that regulators of Britain's previously nationalised industries, such as telecommunications and electricity, were acting to encourage new entrants.
Mr Brown said he planned to expand the government's US-inspired welfare-to-work programme, called the New Deal. The government's target was for a majority of school leavers to go on to take undergraduate courses.
Mr Brown also said he would ease recruitment pressures on high technology businesses by relaxing work permit requirements.
