Monday 22 November 2021 7:00 am | Updated: Sunday 21 November 2021 8:42 pm

Keir’s offensive could put the business vote in play

LONDON, ENGLAND – NOVEMBER 16: Leader of the Labour Party Sir Keir Starmer responds to questions from journalists after delivering a statement on a proposed ban on second jobs for MPs on November 16, 2021 in London, England. Starmer and his party have been hammering the government over its recent attempt to reform Parliament’s Committee on Standards, following a committee report that found Conservative MP Owen Paterson in breach of lobbying rules. (Photo by Rob Pinney/Getty Images)

AROUND this time two years ago, as we hurtled towards the General Election of 2019, this newspaper published a front-page editorial which urged you, our readers, not to vote for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party. Not because of the politics – though high-tax, high-spend has never been our particular brand – but because of the anti-semitism and racism that ran through what was increasingly the nasty party.

Two years later, we have no need to run a similar piece about Keir Starmer’s Labour party. He and his top team, to his credit, have lived and breathed their promise of rooting out racism within the ranks. That means that the Labour party can now be judged on the merits of its policies, not the vile views that came with Corbyn’s leadership. And the business vote is very much in play.

Over the weekend, the former minister Jim O’Neill said the Tories had managed to annoy “virtually everybody” with its u-turn on transport upgrades.

He could have said the same about everything from the delay to business rates reviews to ongoing uncertainty over the future of financial services in a post-Brexit deal. Firms facing labour shortages are not exactly brimming with praise for the help they’ve received from government, either.

The very fact that the Labour leader is writing in City A.M. makes for a welcome change from the Corbyn era, too, with those around the former leader imagining business more as villain than powering the jobs and growth that sustain a country’s living standards. There will be many who agree with Starmer that business is having “its resilience tested every day.”

We are some way away from hearing Labour’s answers to the questions that bother business, but that they are finally being asked by the Labour Party should give others pause. The Prime Minister is once alleged to have used colourful language to fob off Brexit-era cconcerns from the business community. He would be wise not to be so complacent.