UK business turns focus to Labour

THIS week provides a further signal that UK politics is in the midst of a potentially big change cycle. The Labour Party is holding its annual conference in the northern English city of Liverpool, amid record levels of business interest in the party.

It is reported that over 300 chief executives and chairs of big UK companies are attending the conference, more than did so during the entire first term of Tony Blair’s Labour prime ministership from 1997 to 2001. Moreover, business sponsorship of the event has more than doubled since last year.

This business interest highlights, yet again, the growing expectation that Labour will win the next general election after almost a decade and a half out of power. The latest indication that the UK political cycle is turning came last Thursday (Oct 5), with the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election in Scotland.

Even the UK’s top pollster, Professor John Curtice, said he was surprised Labour did so well with the outcome almost as high as the 60 per cent the party won in the constituency in 2010. This was before Labour’s support collapsed in Scotland in the wake of the 2014 independence referendum.

Labour won 40 or more MPs in Scotland in general elections from 1964 to 2010. If the swing last Thursday from the Scottish National Party (SNP) to Labour in Rutherglen and Hamilton West is replicated across the nation, Labour would have 42 seats, and the SNP just six.

So Labour understandably called the result “seismic”, but the truth is a little more nuanced. As Prof Curtice highlights, many of the voters that are supporting Labour at the moment are not necessarily strongly committed to the party, and are more saying “we don’t like anything else”.

This was reinforced by new polling data reportedly presented to Labour leader Keir Starmer recently, which shows that while 79 per cent of UK voters answered yes to the question “Does the country need a change from the Conservatives?”, the figure fell to 37 per cent when people were asked if the country needed a change to Labour.

This may yet mean that Labour fails to fully realise the type of landslide of 1997 or, at least, that it has become harder for the party to win successive big victories because underlying support is not as strong as in the late 1990s and early 2000s which powered the 1997, 2001 and 2005 Blair wins.

That aside, Labour activists are generally in a jubilant mood at the party conference in Liverpool. This is not least as the party also looks set to also win the upcoming by-election on Oct 19, which the Conservatives are defending in Tamworth in the English Midlands.

There is also the possibility of a Labour victory on the same day in Mid-Bedfordshire, further south in England, which the Conservatives are also defending. However, the progressive vote in this by-election could be heavily split between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, which may allow the Conservatives to retain the seat.

Whether Labour wins or not in Mid-Bedfordshire, the bigger picture is that the party is on course for its best election performance in 2024 in potentially more than two decades. Business leaders like to back winners and, with Starmer ever more likely to be the next prime minister, there’s little wonder why corporate chief executives and chairs are in Liverpool in record numbers.