And the Labour Party should wake up to that fact, former ‘Apprentice’ stalwart Nick Hewer tells

As one of Labour’s more prominent supporters in the world of business, Nick Hewer takes a pessimistic view of the party’s future under Jeremy Corbyn.

He has, he says, “gone dead wobbly” in his backing for Labour of late. After a decade at Sir Alan Sugar’s side on the BBC’s The Apprentice, he is widely regarded as a sound judge of leadership quality and business acumen.

It is not Mr Corbyn that he castigates but his Labour predecessor, Ed Miliband, on whom Mr Hewer’s verdict is as brutal as anything Sir Alan might deliver in dismissing one of his contestants. “When I first met Ed Miliband – immediately on his being appointed – on Andrew Neil’s show, I knew he was dead in the water. You can smell a leader and he didn’t smell like a leader. They should have canned him earlier, as you would in business. If somebody is driving the bloody thing into the ground I’m afraid you have to drag them to one side and give them the bad news.”

Mr Hewer’s assessment of Labour’s new leader is kinder, and reflects his background in building a public relations company before he went to work for Sir Alan’s Amstrad. “I think he speaks well and has theTonyWedgwood Benn appeal – if you sat on a long train journey with Benn you’d go and kill for him…”

But it won’t be enough, he thinks. “I think that the policies will not chime with the British people, unless there’s some huge, seismic, unbelievable shift over the next few years and I don’t see it. I think if the economy – I know it has had a little blip – continues to grow and the debt is reduced, people by and large, setting aside those who have been horribly hurt by the welfare cuts, will say, ‘If it ain’t broke don’t try and fix it.’”

Labour has made a mistake in its hostility to business (“Miliband just wasn’t interested –when hewas presented with a bunch of blokes from the City he stuck his nose in the air a bit”) and so has broadcasting, he says. “The country is running on business; why is business so poorly represented?”The media in general “don’t admire business people”, he complains.

He laments the passing of the BBC’s The Money Programme, which ran for 44 years until 2010. “That was a good show and the business community fought to be on that and recognised it was very influential.”

But he says reality TV shows such as The Apprentice and Dragons’ Den have

You can smell a leader and Miliband didn’t smell like a leader. They should have canned him earlier