All Sir James Dyson wanted was to do what hundreds of business people and lobbyists have done before him: spend a little time with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and have a good old moan – initially about research and development tax relief but then extending to other subjects such as corporation tax, high levels of public spending and – according to reports – the number of diversity managers in the NHS.

But Jeremy Hunt’s reaction seems to have taken him aback. Apparently exasperated by Dyson’s list of complains at a Downing Street meeting last week, the Chancellor told Dyson that if he didn’t like the government he should seek to become an MP himself.

Is that really how government ministers should treat voters, not least those who create jobs and bring wealth to the country? Somehow, I don’t think Hunt would be impressed if he took back a malfunctioning vacuum cleaner and was told by the retailer: if you don’t like it, why don’t you set up your own company manufacturing them? I can’t imagine, either, Hunt having the guts to be quite so rude to an NHS diversity manager who found himself at a Downing Street event.

As it happens, I think Hunt is doing a good job as Chancellor. His cuts to National Insurance are turning the Conservatives into the party of the workers. Angela Rayner’s desperate reaction – trying to claim that it would mean cuts to pensions or sickness benefits, as if there really was a National Insurance fund into which the receipts are paid – shows just how ruffled Labour is by this. Nor has Dyson always shown himself to be of sound judgement – his failed attempt to sue the Daily Mirror for a piece that accused him of hypocrisy for campaigning for Brexit and then moving his company HQ to Singapore suggests he has a bit of a thin skin.

Where is the drive to control public spending now?

Nevertheless, it is surely the Chancellor’s job to listen to the likes of Dyson. If the Conservatives are not going to represent the constituency of wealth-creators then what is the point of them? You can sense growing exasperation with the government on the part of business. Dyson is right that corporation tax, which has just been jacked up from 19 per cent to 25 per cent, is too high (although Labour is not promising to reduce it). Energy prices are also far too high, with UK industry paying four or five times as much per unit as their US counterparts. Just the other week Sir Jim Ratcliffe warned that at this rate Europe will lose its entire chemicals industry within 20 years.

In 2010, David Cameron and George Osborne came to power with one over-riding objective: to reduce government borrowing and rebalance the government’s books. Four fifths of the effort was to come from spending cuts and only one fifth from tax increases. The Liberal Democrat half of the coalition was fully on board. Yet where is the drive to control public spending now? It has been entirely lost. The government isn’t talking about cuts at all, while the public sector is allowed to go on expanding its empires, the NHS’s diversity officers a prime example of what is going wrong.

We are unlikely to see Dyson in the House of Commons, but unless he can win back the support of Britain’s wealth-creators, Hunt is unlikely to be there for much longer, either.