Martha Lane Fox, Baroness of Soho, is wrangling with a very determined cat while she discusses the relative attractions of the Conservative and Labour parties.
“She’s such a media tart,” Lane Fox says of the tabby. “You should see her when there’s a TV crew or [the] radio come: she’s right there.”
Still stroking vigorously, she returns to the political outlook for the next general election, which must take place by January 2025. “Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are very sensible, very credible, clearly,” she says, adding that the economic mood music means “all sides are starting to listen to business right now”.
Speaking from her home via video link before the Labour party conference, which starts in Liverpool today, Lane Fox is framed by books spanning philosophy, art and technology, which share shelf space with eccentric trinkets. The collection is testament to a varied career – from technological innovator to cross-bench peer.
She first came to prominence during the dotcom boom of the late 1990s and her career since then has ranged from launching karaoke chain Lucky Voice to serving on the joint committee on national security strategy.
Lane Fox has been president of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) for just over a year, and is keen to emphasise its regional, national and international reach. The BCC comprises 53 UK regional chambers, representing 50,000 businesses which, it says, employ 6 million people. The individual chambers are represented centrally by the BCC from its base in Westminster.
The problem of trying to speak with one voice for 53 chambers was writ large during the EU referendum campaign in 2016, when John Longworth, its then director general, was suspended after reportedly suggesting the UK would be better off outside the EU, despite two-thirds of BCC members backing remain.
This week, the BCC will be at Labour’s conference, and has planned events with the shadow chancellor, shadow business secretary and other teams. It will start with a session on labour shortages and skills with the shadow skills minister tomorrow.
The BCC’s new pitch as a progressive, outward-looking organisation has echoes of the Confederation of British Industry’s rehabilitation efforts in the wake of a sexual misconduct scandal first revealed by the Guardian.
At the time, the BCC was criticised for appearing to make hay while the CBI was trying to manage the fallout from widespread allegations of harassment and assault. The CBI’s then leader, Tony Danker, was ousted after a separate set of complaints, and complained that he had been made “the fall guy” for the business lobbying group’s wider scandal.
Lane Fox tries to swerve accusations of opportunism, noting that the BCC is well over a century old. Nevertheless, last month saw the first meeting of a new BCC group, the business council (first announced in June, hot on the heels of the crisis at the CBI) which says its aim is to “design and drive the future of the British economy”.
The council’s founder members include BP, Heathrow airport, power station operator Drax and IHG Hotels & Resorts.
“I don’t like this kind of ‘they do this, we do that’. That’s just not how I think it’s helpful to represent business to society – and definitely not to government.
“The UK and the business landscape are facing some incredibly complex and profound challenges right now. Climate catastrophe, moving to net zero, productivity, difference in regions and sectors. I personally don’t find it helpful to pit one organisation for or against whatever.”
Yet at a time when the CBI has been largely frozen out of meetings with frontline politicians in government and opposition – and had to scrabble for an emergency funding lifeline last month – Lane Fox is not shy about emphasising the access the BCC can command on behalf of members.
“Shevaun Haviland, our CEO, is on speed dial with shadow chancellors, chancellors and prime ministers,” says Lane Fox. “We’ve got this incredible network at regional and national level. Most vitally, we want to make sure there isn’t an absence of good business policy now politicians are talking about the next election. We can do a good job in making sure Britain is one of the best places to be in business and build a business. We’re just trying to do what the BCC has done for 163 years.”
The business council’s inaugural meeting was attended by some high-profile figures.
“Reeves was there,” Lane Fox says – as were Michael Gove, the secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities and the prime minister’s business adviser, and Franck Petitgas, former head of investment banking at Morgan Stanley.
Starmer attended the BCC’s conference in June. “I don’t think a person could have said the word growth more times in a 15-minute speech,” Lane Fox says. “It was great to hear and he was clearly there to say, ‘We are open for business’.
“It feels like we’re just at that moment in the political cycle where politicians of all shades are thinking carefully about what they’re going to put into their manifestos next year, how they’re going to position themselves, how they are going to reflect the economy and tread that quite difficult line between being realistic about where the UK is but also not talking it down.”
Skills, and the future of the workforce, along with the pace of the transition to net zero and outstanding trade issues after the Brexit deal, are among areas coming to the fore in political and business discussions, Lane Fox says.
But a bigger question facing the BCC, the CBI, all business leaders and all political parties is how to make a positive – perhaps vote-winning – virtue out of presenting an upbeat case for business to the British public.
“I think sometimes, quite understandably, journalists tilt towards the negative – another bad piece of behaviour by a bad male executive, another catastrophic fraud. These all deserve scrutiny and accountability, but in tandem with that, clearly we need business. We need business to thrive and we need to build that narrative too.”
