News that Hugh Osmond is considering relocating Pearl Assurance, his financial services group, outside the UK represents yet another bitter blow for an embattled Labour Party.

While corporate Britain has already let its feelings on high corporation tax and mooted Treasury plans to charge a levy on foreign profits known, entrepreneurs have for the most part saved their ire for recent changes to CGT.

Osmond’s comments in The Times represent the first signs of a pincer movement on Labour’s business and enterprise policy from the entire range of British business. When a serial entrepreneur with such a formidable track record suggests that “any entrepreneur who has made more than ten million quid is looking at leaving”, the government’s claims that it prides itself on encouraging an enterprise economy begin to sound fatally undermined.

But where did it all go so wrong? Gordon Brown can justifiably claim that his chancellorship had enterprise as one of its pillars. Under his financial stewardship, the party lowered the rate of corporation tax paid by smaller companies from 23% in 1997 to 19%, and of course, even 0% for the first £10,000 of profit. He also introduced a series of tax relief incentives, designed to encourage investment in plant and machinery, research and development, IT and e-commerce, and energy efficiency. Seems a long time ago now, doesn’t it?

By 2004, he had already begun to raise the rate of corporation tax again; too many businesses, he said, were setting up as companies or incorporating to take advantage of the low rate of tax. It was a similar story with CGT taper relief. Private equity barons were famously paying ‘less tax than their cleaners’, so Alistair Darling had the unenviable task of informing us that taper relief had to go, much to the chagrin of entrepreneurs and small business owners.

Whether all this suggests a lack of foresight is a moot point, but when serial entrepreneurs align with FTSE 100 companies to attack the government’s enterprise policy, the writing really is on the wall. The Treasury is responding to these high profile criticisms - Darling recently launched a review of the tax regime. It’s been reported that a committee of Treasury officials and senior business figures, including CBI boss Richard Lambert, will discuss corporation tax reforms over the next few weeks. Too little, too late?