After last week’s not-so-mini-Budget Aria Babu has written for City AM on what was welcome but crucially what the Government needs to do next, while Eamonn Ives has a piece in CapX on why a revamped immigration system is vital to Truss’s growth plan. However, this week it would be remiss of me if I didn’t turn attention to His Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition.

After all, Labour had its Party Conference this week in Liverpool with Keir Starmer and the rest of the Labour front bench keen to position the Party as pro-business, making the case for why his is the party to “unleash” Britain’s “entrepreneurial spirit”. According to Starmer:

“Business leaders aren’t knocking on my door saying they want to rip up employee rights. They don’t tell me the problems they face will be solved by corporation tax cuts. They want fair taxes, high skills and the long-term confidence to invest.

“I want to be crystal clear about this: I’m not just pro-business, I want to partner with business. So we will scrap business rates, level the playing-field for start-ups and the high street, give employers new flexibility to invest in the world class training they need.

“And, as Jonny Reynolds said yesterday, invite them to drive forward our modern industrial strategy: a true partnership between government, business and trade unions.

“This isn’t about the size of government – it’s about what government can do. Government can support businesses to innovate and grow. Can bring in the creative genius of our scientists and universities. Can unite us to tackle the country’s challenges on behalf of working people.”

As is normal, the Jonny Reynolds speech Starmer is referring to doesn’t add a lot of meat to the bones, while Lucy Powell’s speech as Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport mostly serves to show how incongruous it is that digital policy sits alongside culture, media and sport in the same department. Obviously this isn’t Powell’s fault, but whoever wins the next election should really bring digital into the business department.

There is a little more policy detail in their Industrial Strategy, which is quite high-level and mostly unobjectionable. It mentions advance market commitments, which is something we've been making the case for. However, calls to level the playing field for the high street should also be treated with caution. Support for high streets is laudable, but punishing online services is not. We shouldn’t be penalising businesses for investing in the latest technologies, or for being able to scale.

Last week I argued that Truss will need to push through major reforms to have any hope of returning the country to 2.5% growth. For its part, Labour will need some bolder policies to get the ‘entrepreneurs vote’. At least in his speech Starmer mentions the triumvirate of areas requiring reforms I pointed to last week – house-building (I would add office and lab space as well), childcare costs, and immigration reform.

We’ve fed into Labour’s Startup Review and we’ll be hosting roundtable discussions in the next few months to build on this. With Tulip Siddiq we’ll explore ‘how to encourage more growing UK firms to reach the highest growth stage’, and, on the back of our Female Founders Forum work, we’ll discuss ‘how to ensure more women can successfully start and grow businesses’ with Anneliese Dodds, Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities.

We’ll be inviting our Advisers and others who have informed our thinking in these areas, but let me know if you’re particularly keen on influencing Labour.

All Change
As reported in Politico, Eamonn Ives has joined The Entrepreneurs Network as our new Head of Research: “It’s a return to wonk-land for the COP26 aide, who previously headed up energy and environment work at the Centre for Policy Studies.” In 2020, Eamonn wrote our influential Green Entrepreneurship report, many of the policies of which were later adopted by the Government.

In addition, Aria Babu has been promoted from Senior Researcher to a new role: Head of Policy. As discussed here last week, now feels like a real crunch time in terms of getting good ideas into government and the opposition. It’s pleasing that we’ve got such a strong team to make the case for the policies we’ve been designing and championing – as well as coming up with some more.