The contradiction is palpable. Everything Keir Starmer promised at yesterday’s ‘investment summit’ is undermined by the damage his government is already inflicting on businesses.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in conservation with former CEO of Google, Eric Schmdit and Dame Emma Walmsley the CEO of GSK , during the International Investment Summit on October 14, 2024 in London Last June, 120 self-styled business leaders, few of them people of real influence in the corporate world, announced that they were backing Labour to revitalise UK plc.
Many business leaders seem to have hoped that this administration would be a kind of ‘New New Labour’ –but their faith was sharply dented by the new government’s slavish capitulation towards the unions, who duly received their pay-offs as soon as Starmer arrived in Downing Street. The fundamental tension at the heart of this government is now crystal-clear. Starmer, even if he does want to improve Britain’s growth prospects, is hamstrung by his party’s paymasters, as well as the instinctive antipathy among many on the Left towards business itself.
Jonathan Reynolds has justified the tax hike by stressing that Labour did not specifically promise not to ramp up employer NI contributions, only that ‘taxes on working people’ would not rise This approach stinks of incompetence, ignorance and inexperience. Does anyone in the Cabinet have any serious business background? Reeves insists she has, because she has worked in banking, but that’s very different from running a company and dealing with its daily challenges.
Pink-haired secretary of State for Transport Louise Haigh arrives at International Investment Summit 2024 in Guildhall, London