Chief Political Correspondent

... and Lord Sugar resigns over anti-business policies

LABOUR peer Lord Sugar has quit the party over its ‘negative business policies’.

The Apprentice star, who has been linked to Labour for 18 years, said he had been disillusioned with its ‘antienterprise’ approach for months.

He added that he had made his decision to leave the party at the start of the year, but did not make this fact public to avoid harming Ed Miliband’s election campaign.

He will retain his seat in the Lords, serving as a crossbencher.

Lord Sugar was appointed a peer in 2009 by Gordon Brown, who made him his enterprise tsar – but yesterday the businessman said he had sensed a shift back towards Old Labour under Mr Miliband.

Labour’s biggest donor, John Mills, offered a similar assessment, telling the BBC’s World At One: ‘Labour was perceived quite widely as not being as business-friendly as it might have been, and that wasn’t helpful.’ He said the party needed to ‘move in a different, more electable direction’.

In his statement, Lord Sugar said the party had been ‘aware of my disillusionment for some time’.

He added: ‘In the past year I found myself losing confidence in the party due to their negative business policies and the general anti-enterprise concepts they were considering if they were to be elected. I expressed this to the most senior figures in the party several times.’

Lord Sugar said he had declined hundreds of media requests in the run-up to the election to talk about the party’s policies, which included introducing a higher minimum wage and ban on zero hours contracts.

He continued: ‘By the start of this year, I had made my decision to resign from the party ... [but] decided, as a relatively high-profile individual, to keep my intentions quiet for the duration of the campaign ... there are many good people in Labour working hard every day to serve the public and I wish them all the best of luck.’

A party spokesman said: ‘We would like to thank Alan for his years of generous support and for his service in the Lords, and we wish him well.’

Chris Leslie has been promoted by acting Labour leader Harriet Harman to replace Ed Balls as Shadow Chancellor, after the latter lost his seat in the General Election.

The reshuffle also saw Hilary Benn replace Douglas Alexander as Shadow Foreign Secretary.

Sadiq Khan, a close ally of Mr Miliband, stepped down as justice spokesman to be replaced by former justice secretary Lord Falconer. He is now expected to put himself forward as Labour’s candidate for next year’s London mayoral election.