RUTH SUNDERLAND: Labor must listen to business

Every minister’s nightmare is to be paraded before the media by an angry member of the public.

Most people have never heard of James Murray of the Treasury Department, one of Rachel Reeves’ henchmen.

He was sent in last week to undermine Labour’s supposedly wondrous plans to overhaul business rates by charging big warehouses more – although unless and until the proposals become reality, small retailers will face higher bills.

Murray might have expected a smoothly choreographed PR tour, chatting with Labour-friendly shop owners, when he was driven around Darlington, where the Treasury has a northern outpost, a few days ago.

He was soon razed by Jane and Frederic Robineau, who own a popular pastry shop in town.

They told him that small business owners are “sitting at the kitchen table crying” as they try to figure out how to deal with the big increases in national insurance and the minimum wage.

The minister was perhaps fortunate that the media had not witnessed his humiliation en masse, as the two-and-a-half train journey from London to County Durham seemed to have put off most people.

But if his boss Reeves and her boss Sir Keir Starmer won’t listen to the Robineaus, perhaps they could pay attention to Sir Rocco Forte, who also runs a family business, albeit a much larger one.

Forte has, as the Mail on Sunday revealed yesterday, left the country. His departure for Rome was accompanied by a vicious parting shot at Labour.

Although Forte says he left Britain primarily because his business interests are now mainly in Italy, he accuses Reeves of a “disastrous budget” and drags us back to the 1970s. He knows many others, he says, who are also leaving.

The Budget, coupled with the relentless gloom that Reeves and Starmer are projecting on the economy, has crushed entrepreneurs.

According to the Institute of Directors, optimism among business leaders has fallen almost as low as the record lows at the start of the corona crisis. In other words, Labor is almost as bad for business confidence as a deadly global pandemic. Not a good look.

Before the election, Reeves and Starmer were on a charm offensive with the business community. They still insist they want to unleash growth, and Reeves has put forward plans such as creating pension mega-funds for local authorities, which she says could unlock £80 billion of investment in UK infrastructure, along with reforms to increase competitiveness in financial services.

These ideas are sensible in themselves, but they are completely out of step with the divisive, punitive and fear-mongering atmosphere that Starmer and Reeves have created, which has made entrepreneurs and families feel that their only value to government is to be cash cows that need to be milked. before tax.

Individuals like Angela Rayner and the colorfully coiffed former transport secretary Louise Haigh come across as overgrown student protesters rather than mature politicians. This does not detract from burnishing UK PLC’s international reputation, at a time when we should look like a more stable business environment than crisis-hit France and Germany.

Labor must abandon the naive socialist belief that the only part of the economy that matters is the public sector, and start listening to the creators of wealth.

The hostility towards business increases the negativity daily. Time to grow up and rule.