Keir Starmer Has "Reshaped" Labour's Relationship With Businesses That Flocked To Conference
4 min read
The business world flocking en masse to Labour party conference in Liverpool is one of the clearest indications that Keir Starmer is seen as the Prime Minister in waiting, but the close relationship with the private sector presents the party with some tensions, too.
"He [Starmer] has got absolutely no ideological hang ups about working with business," Lord Peter Mandelson told a dinner hosted by the City of London Corporation on Monday night.
The prominence of the Blairite former Cabinet minister in Merseyside over the past few days has been symbolic of where Starmer has positioned Labour since replacing Jeremy Corbyn as leader over three years ago. In his bid to win Labour its first election since 2005, Starmer has dragged the party to the ideological centre-ground, and with Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves spent a great deal of time trying to secure the backing of British business.
"Let me tell you something," Mandelson told a room full of industry leaders high up in Liverpool's Liver Building. "They [Starmer and Reeves] are deadly serious about working closely and properly with the private sector."
Mandelson joked that in recent years he wouldn't have been "seen, let alone speak" at a Labour conference, and congratulated Starmer on "reclaiming" the party from the left-wing leadership of Corbyn and turning Labour from "weird to normal".
Speak to any of the hundreds upon hundreds of business figures in Liverpool's ACC Arena, and they will likely tell you that Starmer and Reeves' business blitz is paying off.
"We had a lunch at Tory conference and we spent the first 30 minutes talking about what Labour might do," a senior figure at one industry body in Liverpool told PoliticsHome.
Banks, businesses and consultancies representing clients keen to lobby what they expect to be the next government have deployed large numbers of people to Liverpool's dockside in a bid to get as much face time with Shadow Cabinet ministers possible.
Consultancy Hanbury Strategy, for example, has sent its recently-expanded Labour Unit to Merseyside as it spends more time and focus on Starmer's party and less on the Conservatives, with opinion polls continuing to give Labour large, double-digit leads over Rishi Sunak's Tories and very recent surveys picking up no signs of a Conservative party conference "bounce" for the Prime Minister.
“Keir Starmer and his front bench have successfully reshaped the party’s relationship with business, setting a clear direction and opportunity for engagement around his five missions," Niamh Fogarty, Partner at Hanbury Strategy, told PoliticsHome.
"Based on the polls and their conversations with the Shadow Cabinet so far, business can see that Labour could very well be a government in waiting and now are looking for more detail on how policy and a partnership with the private sector would work in practice.”
Labour raised nearly £2m selling space in the exhibition hall where businesses and other stakeholders have tried to attract the attentions of passing Labour MPs, and its business day on Monday was expected to double the 2022 attendance and revenue raised.
The scale of the corporate presence in Liverpool is striking and generally regarded as a positive sign for a party trying to win its first general election in nearly 20 years.
But the newfound closeness of Labour's relationship with business has quietly created some uncomfortable moments for the party established to stand up for the rights of workers at its annual conference.
At a fringe event hosted by Logistics UK and Total Politics Group on Tuesday morning, Labour peer Lord Knight challenged Amazon's Director of Public Policy Monica Arino about the mammoth company's refusal to recognise unions.
“You’re very convincing that you’re a wonderful employer. What are you scared of about recognising unions if you’re such a great employer? There’s a logic that’s missing," said the former Labour MP, before adding that it is "difficult" for Amazon workers to hold ballots.
Arino insisted Amazon wasn't "anti-union" and that the company's employees have so far chosen to not recognise a union. She also said that she had been happy to talk to protesters who were assembled outside the fringe event and that had demonstrated at a number of panel discussions involving Amazon during Labour Party conference.
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