The term 'businessman' is offensive, according to new guidelines from another woke quango.

Who is it now – the gay/trans rights mafia Stonewall? The latest directive from the Civil Service working party on Diversity, Equality and Inclusion? The cross-dressing MGBGT+ wing of Scotland Yard's fraud squad?

Truth be told, it could be any of them. They've been rewriting the English language ever since Harriet Harman's hairy armpit brigade decided that 'manhole' was a hate crime 40-odd years ago.

In their Star Trek-like quest to seek out offence where no offence has been taken before, the wokerati have been scouring the dictionary for words to ban, many of them sex- or gender-related.

Beam me up, Scotty.

This time, though, it isn't the statutory Guardianista-dominated diversity industry which has decided that 'businessman' must go.

It's contained in an official 'gender-neutral language guide' from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The Paris-based outfit says the correct term should be 'businessperson'.

You might think that in the scheme of things, none of this actually matters – any more than calling lady committee chairman 'chairs', as if they've all got four legs.

You might also think that with European economies, including Britain, in a debt-ridden death spiral, an organisation established to promote economic development might have something better to do.

But as the free speech campaigner Toby Young said: 'The OECD is typical of elite European institutions. Instead of doing its job, which is to promote free trade and economic growth, it's been captured by radical progressive ideology and now thinks its role is to promote social justice.'

Labour buys into all this nonsense, too. Only last week Surkeir was talking about 'statespersons' in the Commons. Give me strength.

In fact, when I first read the headline on this story, I assumed it referred to our own Government. Certainly they give every impression of finding businessmen as a species deeply offensive.

Under Starmer and Rachel From Complaints business is being driven into the ground. Their every policy appears to be deliberately aimed at destroying enterprise and milking every last penny out of wealth creators.

The National Insurance rises and other tax raids in the last Budget have crippled the retail, hospitality and farming sectors in particular. In the wider economy, firms have stopped hiring and unemployment has gone through the roof.

Millionaires and non-doms have been queueing up to catch the last train to Clarksville, Dubai, Milan, and all points East and West. More than 16,000 have legged it abroad since the last Budget.

The property market has imploded and yet there was a report yesterday that Labour is planning to slap £50,000 on the cost of building a new home, thanks to a £1billion stealth tax on the construction industry.

And there's much worse to come, if the horror stories coming out of the Treasury in advance of the upcoming November Budget are anything to go by.

On top of Ginge Rayner's union-friendly employment reforms, we are braced for increases in capital gains tax and property taxes as well as cuts to pension tax relief, all of which will hit the businessmen (and women) who are the backbone of the British economy.

Many more of our successful entrepreneurs and investors will decide the game is no longer worth the candle.

Tragically, there is no indication that Reeves or Starmer will take the slightest notice of repeated warnings from our most prominent business leaders.

When it comes to Labour's war on wealth creators, it's not business, it's personal. 

In the past couple of days, the head of Marks & Spencer added his three-penn'orth to the foreboding. Stuart Machin said: 'Retail has a big role to play. We're the engine of the everyday economy – creating jobs, driving High Street footfall, and making sure families get affordable and high-quality food, clothes and other essential goods.

'Over the last year retail has been hit by an alphabet soup of taxes and regulations. New packaging taxes cost M&S almost £40million a year. The drinks deposit return scheme another £30million to set up. Higher NICs have been catastrophic, costing us an extra £60million and leading to almost 100,000 lost jobs across the economy.

'Retail is now facing £7billion in additional costs, and our tax bill at M&S has risen to roughly £650million. Add all this to the impact on farmers in our supply chain from changes to inheritance tax and you've got a recipe for disaster.'

All this on top of the burden of having to pay unnecessarily sky-high energy bills as a result of eco-zealot Ed Miliband's deranged Net Zero crusade.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about hotelier Rocco Forte relocating his business to Milan. I'd thought about saying 'Will the last millionaire to leave Britain please turn out the lights' – but thanks to Mister Ed the lights will have long gone out before then.

The latest leak suggests the Treasury is now targeting the travel industry with higher taxes, so there'll be no escape for those on modest incomes – not even on holiday.

In treating business as a milch cow – to feed their client base in the unions, the burgeoning, unproductive public sector, and the millions languishing on benefits – Labour will by extension be hitting the very 'working people' they claim to champion with everything from fewer jobs to higher bills, dragging the country ever nearer outright bankruptcy.

The truth is, Labour doesn't even like most working people, any more than they like wealthy businessmen.

Now that's what I call offensive.