What was unimaginable in the days of Jeremy Corbyn has become routine under Sir Keir Starmer. The rapprochement between Labour and capitalism was on lavish display last Thursday when a throng of business bosses crowded into an executive suite at the Oval cricket ground in south London for an audience with the Labour leader and Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor. Both told some 400 senior corporate leaders that Labour is now “the party of business”. The mantra was repeated by Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow business secretary, and Tulip Siddiq, the shadow City minister.
Organisers gleefully reported that every £1,000-a-head ticket for this all-day “Labour business conference” had been snapped up within four hours of being offered. Among the attendees were representatives from AstraZeneca, Barclays, HSBC, Goldman Sachs, Google, Legal & General and Shell. No one said, as Ed Miliband once did as Labour leader, that elements of business act like “predators”. The event was the most explicit demonstration yet of Labour’s concerted effort to get close to business and to be seen to be close.
