Our chickens are coming home to roost. There is no getting away from the incredibly weak economic forecasts in the Autumn Statement. In five years' time, the average household will be poorer than they were before the pandemic.

Many readers won’t be the average household, and entrepreneurs can be successful in the midst of a recession. Even during the Great Depression, and in Communist states for that matter, entrepreneurs found a way. But it’s harder – not least because their consumers are poorer.

But forecasts aren’t destiny. This is no comment on the smarts and credibility of the Office for Budget Responsibility, but an acknowledgement of the limitations of forecasting and known (and unknown) unknowns. Of course, these predictions may just as likely be optimistic, but I think there are things we can do to turn things around: things that we know would work.

But first, the Autumn Statement. As Eamonn Ives, our Head of Research, summarised, it’s a familiar mix of the good, the bad, and the let’s wait and see. We have a thread outlining the main announcements relevant for entrepreneurs.

I won’t go over everything, but focus on a few things that are important to entrepreneurs.

It was pleasing to see the online sales tax being ruled out (again), which we most recently argued should happen in our Access All Areas: Finance report with Enterprise Nation.

Perhaps it’s only ever raised as a possibility in each Budget so organisations like ours can pat the government on the back for not doing it (like taxing pensions). I think the threat is real, with powerful voices, including successive Tesco bosses, calling for an online sales tax. And while the Treasury will push back because the economics don’t add up – a bad tax only takes one bad decision to implement. They then have a tendency to prove hard to ditch – Stamp Duty being a case in point."

We were delighted to see the planned changes to EIS, SEIS and VCTs will be retained. It’s impossible to have a roundtable without our entrepreneurs proselytising about the value of these schemes to any politicians who will listen. That’s why we’ve long-supported them to fix a clear market failure.

In fact, we’re in the process of working on a report with the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Entrepreneurship on the value of these tax breaks. While the Call for Evidence is now closed, please feel free to reach out to Aria Babu, our Head of Policy, if you’ve got something you think we might miss.

The Chancellor also pledged to bring forward a bill to provide new powers to the ‘Digital Markets Unit’. In its previously planned iteration, we identified significant risks to competition, innovation and entrepreneurship. The wording we have in the Autumn Statement is unclear – focusing on laudable things like introducing measures to prevent subscription traps and fake reviews – but devil, or not, will be in the detail.

Jeremy Hunt also promised to ensure regulations are fit for purpose. While there are limits to divergence from the EU and other markets, I think there are some emerging technologies where we can carve out a niche as a testbed nation.

There are many other announcements that you’ll find on our thread, covering NICs, VAT, R&D, Catapults and business rates that I’ll pick over in the coming weeks.

Snap back to reality. So what next?

Yesterday I was at a talk on ‘Why do liberal democracies feel stuck?’ at King’s College, London, chaired by Munira Mirza (see below for our event with her) and featuring the economist Tyler Cowen. In short, Cowen argued for optimism, asking the audience to weigh up all the problems we see in the world against the immense talent we now have. With new technologies like vaccines and nuclear fusion, for Cowen, the latter always outweighs the former. And that’s where entrepreneurs come in. With or without government, entrepreneurs will find a way.

Even outside of the Autumn Statement, the UK Government can speed up this process – whether that’s immigration (in fact, OBR analysis accompanying the Autumn Statement revealed that Jeremy Hunt is relying on a surge in net migration to more than 200,000 people per year to help deliver economic growth – don't tell Suella Braverman), planning policy and procurement (which is already happening) or childcare reforms (which we will cover in our forthcoming Female Founders Forum report).

Another area the government should push ahead with is infrastructure. Sam Dumitriu (formerly of this house), is getting stuck into fixing our slowdown of building stuff with Britain Remade. As it says on their website: “We built the world's first railway, the world's first coal-fired power station, and the world's first commercial nuclear power station.”

Their first finding is that we aren’t necessarily a nation of NIMBYs, with polling revealing that wind farms and solar fields do have popular support – especially if they bring a discount on fuel bills – even if built near people's homes.

In his speech, the Chancellor reminded us of his entrepreneurial roots, stating his ambition to “turn Britain into the world’s next Silicon Valley.” What is the Government waiting for?