Labour’s stance on business is bust

WITH Labour in the box seat to win power at the election, scrutiny focuses ever more closely on the party’s economic policies.

Given that business is the engine room of the economy, Sir Keir Starmer and Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves have declared themselves to be proudly pro-enterprise.

Just as Gordon Brown had his ‘prawn cocktail offensive’ to seduce the City ahead of the landslide 1997 victory, so they have been hobnobbing with corporate grandees.

The pair are desperate to convince business leaders that they have nothing to fear from a Labour government. But are they speaking with forked tongues?

After all, Angela Rayner, the party’s deputy leader, has promised that she will bring forward a radically Left-wing employment rights bill in Labour’s first 100 days in power.

Sir Keir himself has publicly endorsed this so-called new deal for working people. But rather than being pro-growth, this would in fact be firmly statist and heap costs and red tape on to private firms.

Indeed, almost every pledge might have been calculated to kill jobs and strangle business – whether banning flexible zerohours contracts, giving all workers sick pay and parental leave from day one or making it harder to let unsuitable staff go.

Add the handing of more power to the militant unions (Labour’s paymasters, remember) and it’s understandable that business leaders are sceptical.

one of the biggest drags on Britain’s economy is the spiralling numbers dropping out of the workforce, while vacancies are at a near record high. The imperative must be to get people into jobs – not make it more difficult for firms to employ them.

Lord Mandelson, the architect of new Labour who has Sir Keir’s ear, understands the importance of not deterring business and investment.

Yesterday, he warned that Ms Rayner’s controversial reforms risk doing just that, to the detriment of the economy.

This presents Sir Keir with a huge headache. Does he side with the peer and the enterprise-friendly wing of his party – or his hot-headed deputy, who will bridle at having her plans watered down?

We have seen what destructive internecine warfare has done for the Tories. The electorate has turned its back on them.

Yet anyone who imagines Labour is a united party should think again. The growing row over business shows the cracks are all too clear to see.