The Notebook: So, when does Labour actually become pro-business?

Where the City’s movers and shakers have their say. Today, it’s Michael Martins, founding partner at Overton Advisory, with the notebook pen, asking Labour to start walking the walk when it comes to being pro-business

So, when does Labour become more pro-business?

One of Labour’s key electoral successes last month was its almost complete takeover of pre-election business support. Most businesses fawned over themselves to have a Labour heavy-hitter or up-and-comer attend a site visit or signal support of their key policy issues. Following these meetings, Linkedin would light up with lobbyists trying to outdo each other in their claim of how pro-business, pro-investment and pro-growth Labour was in the hope of being given future policy favour and access.

So, I have to ask: when does Labour actually become more pro-business?

A little over a month into the job, Labour’s biggest achievements so far are a de facto ban on North Sea energy investment (even as some expect imports of more emissions-intensive energy to increase), a double digit, multi-year pay rise for a fifth of the workforce (spending billions on increasing inflation, rather than productivity enhancing capital investments), allowing energy secretary Ed Miliband to pick billion pound winners in the renewables sector, and confirmation that the party intends to make it harder for employers to hire by bringing in employment rights from day one.

In return, businesses have been told that the Chancellor has the worst economic inheritance in modern history and that most worker-affiliated taxes are not going up. That points to higher, or potentially even new, taxes for businesses, even as the Bank of England has started to cut interest rates ahead of what they think is a likely economic slowdown.

Granted, most of the government has gone on a month-long holiday after their first three weeks in the job, so it’s difficult to know for sure which taxes will go up and which will just stay high. But so far, it’s been difficult to square how the new Chancellor can claim poverty on the one hand and then give billions of pounds to millions of public servants on the other. Hopefully some of the more business-minded ministers in cabinet like Jonny Reynolds and Darren Jones will begin winning the arguments. 

Strategic Defence Review needs a public submission deadline

One of defence secretary John Healey’s first acts was to announce a Strategic Defence Review, an early step to flesh out Labour’s defence policy agenda. Helpfully, Healey made it clear that he wants as much industry and ally input as possible to best position the UK for its evolving threat landscape. Unhelpfully, Healey seems to have forgotten to include dates and emails for when submissions will open and close, forcing lobbyists to rely on offhand remarks in the Lords to find the right secretariat address. 

Former spads are the new opposition

Many short-sighted lobbying companies are currently spurning former Conservative special advisers, but that hasn’t stopped many from taking on the role of opposition during the Tories’ arduous leadership contest. Ex-spads know just how the bodies are buried. Former Michael Gove spad Henry Newman, for example, recently scooped that the business and trade department (DBT) has axed all its non-executive director roles, severing a key link between the DBT and the wider business community, likely in a prelude to bringing in its own business backers. 

Full fat decarbonisation, please

Labour has made it clear that it wants to decarbonise the energy sector and system. Less clear, however, is whether it plans to shake things up at some of the places where energy is actually used and emissions created, like in buildings and non-energy sectors. For a government seemingly committed to moving fast and fixing stuff, perhaps a more general approach could help to unlock big investment projects, rather than creating sectoral ambiguity and uncertainty. 

Looking to escape? Read Children of Time

I accidentally booked most of my holidays during the general election campaign because I thought a summer election would be a foolhardy call at best for the now former PM. Silly me (or him), but as a result, I’ve been engrossed in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time trilogy as a form of staycation escapism. Fans of the Three Body Problem series will love these Tchaikovsky books, which take place after a global civil war has destroyed Earth and forced the survivors to venture out into space to terraform planets into new habitable worlds. Along the way, humanity’s survivors must learn to co-exist with equally intelligent but wildly alien and sometimes hostile spiders, octopi and other uplifted species in this genre bending trilogy. 

Michael Martins is the founding partner at Overton Advisory