Evening Standard comment: Labour woos business even while it attacks it

The surprising thing about this week’s Labour Party Conference is not the attack on private enterprise — what do you expect from revolutionary Marxists? It is rather that so many businesses have turned up to hear it.

From the conference platform, the shadow chancellor told delegates he would nationalise the utilities, set credit card interest rates and abolish the private finance initiative — once Gordon Brown’s favourite instrument for public service investment.

Meanwhile, beyond the hall, the party’s business forum is oversubscribed, with 1,000 more corporate delegates than last year and the likes of BP, Barclays and Microsoft rubbing shoulders with Momentum and the Vegan Society.

In part, this reflects political reality: as the head of one lobbying firm told PRWeek, “clients are thinking seriously about how to engage with Labour, a trend we picked up with our event: ‘a government in waiting’.”

The Conservatives feign the outrage of a spurned lover but it was they who started the estrangement with big business. From her first day, Theresa May defined her government as a crusader against the “advantages of the fortunate few”.

The first policy that was recognisably her own was to demand workers sit on corporate boards. She travelled to Davos to berate the business audience who had come to listen to her, and her first conference speech derided “citizens of the world” for being “citizens of nowhere”.

The policy for exiting the EU explicitly prioritised concerns about sovereignty rather than economics — so much so that Philip Hammond’s call for a “business-friendly” Brexit was seen as off-message. The previous PM’s Business Council was summarily disbanded and in this year’s election the offer of a letter from business supporters was arrogantly rejected.

None of this was an accident. It was a calculation that the party should join in attacks on corporate “elites” and harness for its own purposes anger at the “establishment” evident in the votes for Brexit, Trump and nationalist parties in Europe. There’s nothing wrong with picking sides in politics but don’t be surprised if those you reject return the favour and are at best ambivalent about you.

Incongruous

At the same time, and with equal calculation, the Labour Party has decided it should court business.

It may be incongruous to see the same John McDonnell whose Who’s Who interests include “generally fermenting the overthrow of capitalism” now boasting of his “cup of tea offensive” with the City. But he is clearly willing to put together whatever coalition is required to get him and his comrades into Downing Street.

That is why the one accommodation the hard-Left leadership has made with the moderates has been over Brexit. Not debating it at Conference was a mistake, for it has allowed stories of confusion to emerge, with Sadiq Khan now hinting at a second referendum.

But the central compromise between a leadership that privately willed a Leave vote and a parliamentary party that campaigned to Remain is still intact.

Jeremy Corbyn exposed his view that the EU is a capitalist conspiracy when he said on Sunday that the problem with the single market is that the rules prevent you intervening in business. Yet he now flirts with continuing membership of that single market and the customs union, and promotes Keir Starmer — one of the few shadow cabinet members who could have served in the Blair government.

Why? Because he thinks that is all a price worth paying to keep moderates on side and avoid the outright hostility of business, who would otherwise be rightly alarmed at the prospect of this anti-enterprise Labour Party coming to office.

It’s further evidence of what those in Brighton have reported back: these people are now serious about winning. Business scents that, and has turned up in force. For, as they say, power is where power goes.