Businesses backing Starmer ought to write a clean cheque to Labour

There’s only one thing certain about Labour’s plans for business. We will not find out in full what they are until after the General Election.

When the party publishes its manifesto next month, it will be short on depth, light on detail. That has been Keir Starmer’s cynical ploy from the day he took over the leadership from Jeremy Corbyn in 2020, and he has no intention of jeopardising Labour’s 20-point lead in the opinion polls by outlining his actual policies – least of all where they will have an impact on business and the economy.

So it’s beyond comprehension that 121 business leaders should give him their uncritical backing in a letter hailing Labour as the ‘party of change’ this week.

Strategy

Signatories including celebrity chef Tom Kerridge and Mike Soutar (best-known as one of Alan Sugar’s interviewers on The Apprentice) announced they ‘are looking for a government that will partner fiscal discipline with a long-term growth strategy’.

The 200-word letter continued: ‘Labour has shown it has changed and wants to work with business to achieve the UK’s full economic potential. We should now give it the chance to change the country.’

This is blind and ill-judged optimism that’s hopelessly divorced from reality – exactly what Starmer is relying on to sweep him to power.

The fact is that no one can know that Labour has ‘changed’ as the party refuses to say what economic policies it intends to pursue… and when a shadow cabinet minister does drop a hint by accident, the spin machine quickly goes into reverse to cover up the consequent damage.

The letter, four paragraphs of wishful thinking, is now on the Labour website where anyone who wants to pose as a ‘business leader’ can add their name to it. It’s telling, however, that almost no names from the top 100 FTSE companies appear.

Instead, the undersigned include right-on entrepreneurs such as Paul Lindley, who founded the organic baby and toddler food brand Ella’s Kitchen, and Chris Slater, the CEO of carbon credit insurance company Oka, which promotes ‘carbon offset projects that truly impact climate change’.

Two surprising names are Sir Malcolm Walker and his son Richard, respectively the founder and executive chairman of Iceland Foods.

This time last year, Richard Walker wrote to the Prime Minister, telling him: ‘It is my most fervent wish that I succeed in becoming an approved Conservative Party candidate, and I have… given my all to earning that privilege.’

His father backed his ambition. And now here they both are, a few months later, declaring their no doubt ­‘fervent wish’ to see a Labour government. There’s a pungent whiff of sour grapes and opportunism in the air.

I am reminded of the last time that Labour looked set to oust the Tories by a landslide, at the end of the John Major era in 1997. Richard Branson, one of the most high-profile beneficiaries of the Thatcher economic boom, switched tracks and – less than one week before the General Election – posed with Labour leader Tony Blair in the driver’s cab of a Virgin train.

Branson was duly rewarded with an invitation to Blair’s notorious celebrity dinner parties at Chequers, mingling with the likes of Sting, Elton John, Bono, Judi Dench, Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons.

Yet by November that year he was complaining loudly of Labour’s broken promises. This time round, there won’t even be any promises to break. The signatories might as well be writing a blank cheque to Labour, drawn against their own company accounts.

Many of them are, I suspect, trying to earn some credit with the man they assume must inevitably become our next PM. It will do them little good – and they are squandering the respect of those who expect better from genuine business leaders.

Some are indulging in blatant political posturing – the minor celebrities among them simply can’t help it. Others can’t resist the cheap temptation to be seen backing a sure winner. But businessmen and women should stand above the petty tribalism of party politics, for the good of their employees as well as their shareholders.

There’s a more sinister undercurrent here. The party Starmer inherited from Corbyn was hardline socialist with many policies drawn from extremist Left-wing ideology. Those alarming tendencies are still lurking just below Labour’s surface.

Pandering

Starmer is pandering to both Labour’s wings. This week he declared himself a socialist, while Shadow Deputy PM Angela Rayner is unabashed in her socialism – she being a class warrior who believes capitalism is a dirty word.

It’s true that Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves refuses to say the same of herself. She promises to be a safe pair of hands for business, who will encourage growth and won’t raise taxes.

She is clearly determined not to scare the horses. But if she is true to her word, these two opposing forces – Reeves and Rayner – will surely tear the party apart as soon as it is in government and only one will emerge victorious.

Given that she has the backing of the trade unions, Labour’s paymasters, that’s bound to be Rayner.

That, of course, will be disastrous for Britain. For the life of me, I cannot see why any responsible business leader would urge the country to vote for any such scenario.

Rayner has genuinely dangerous ideas. Last year, on the eve of the party conference, she announced a seven-point plan to bolster workers’ rights and union power.

This includes full employment rights for staff from the day they start work, including sick pay and parental leave – a foolish proposal that could so easily be abused it will deter employers from taking on new workers.

Anything that discourages businesses from hiring ­people is obviously bad for growth, a fact that Labour cannot understand because it has an ingrained attitude, dating back to its Dickensian roots, that all bosses are inherently wicked.

Other plans include repealing anti-union legislation, threatening a return to the Wilson era when endless industrial disputes and strikes were known as ‘the British disease’.

Rayner has been pushing this policy for years. In 2021 she called it Labour’s ‘new deal for working people’.

Earlier this year she restated a commitment to introduce draft employment legislation within 100 days of winning power, new laws that could also oblige small ­businesses to conform to ‘diversity’ guidelines.

When business chiefs voice genuinely held concerns about Rayner’s plans, she simply accuses them of ‘squealing’.

My guess is that many of the signatories on this week’s letter will be squealing themselves when they discover the full implications of what they have backed. Small businesses with two or three dozen employees need flexibility to survive, to invest and to grow.

As I said, ‘growth’ is one of Rachel Reeves’s buzzwords. But she’s not talking about deregulation or tax breaks, policies that actually free businesses to expand. In fact, it is far from clear how Labour expects to see growth. Platitudes and vague promises won’t achieve it.

Since Labour has so few explicit policies, we don’t know the full extent of their spending plans yet, either. All we can say with certainty is that they expect Britain’s employers to pay for it.

Which means those ‘business leaders’ who signed a blank cheque this week could soon be rueing the cost.

Patrick Dardis is the former chief executive of Young’s Pubs