A year ago Andy Burnham had a tough business reception at Labour’s party conference. The then mayor of Greater Manchester, with clear ambitions to replace Keir Starmer, had rattled the City of London with his comment that Britain should be less “in hock” to bond markets. Returning to the annual gathering in Liverpool a year later as prime minister, the mood is different.
Labour is pushing to repair relations with corporate Britain and reassure City bond traders against a jittery backdrop amid the Middle East war. At a private reception on Monday night hosted by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), HSBC and National Grid, John Healey told executives the government would do “our bit” to support firms struggling with rising costs. The chancellor said his budget next month would also have fiscal discipline at its core.
Over bottled beer and glasses of wine overlooking the River Mersey, one executive praised the chancellor: “Can I just say, bloody wonderful speech of yours at conference today. Really determined to achieve success; it went down very well.” For most bosses, however, there is a caveat: the 28 October budget. Labour gained a reputation after its return to government in 2024 for love-bombing bosses before then raising taxes on firms.
She said that while Burnham appeared to be in listening mode, Labour faced difficult decisions at next month’s budget. Without denigrating the previous [administration], they’ve sort of said, ‘“Look, we need to get change, but also, how can we be responsive?’” In previous years there had been a clamour among businesses to attend Labour’s annual conference – held for three years running in Liverpool – to the point it was jokingly dubbed the “Davos on the Mersey”, referring to the annual gathering of the global elite in the Swiss ski resort. Starmer had run a strategy before his landslide election victory to win corporate endorsements to burnish Labour’s credentials in City boardrooms.
But within his first months in office relations had soured, after Rachel Reeves sprung £40bn of tax increases – centred squarely on employers – in her first budget. This year, delegates said there appeared to be fewer top bosses at Labour’s “business day”, where executives paid £6,000 a ticket to attend an exclusive breakfast reception hosted by the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, followed by a “fireside chat” with Burnham. However, corporate Britain was still evident en masse, with companies including Mastercard, HSBC and Heathrow among those paying thousands to sponsor fringe sessions and private networking events.
After smaller sessions focusing on policy, executives were ushered into the main auditorium to hear the chancellor’s speech, including Paul Thwaite, the chief executive of NatWest, and the bosses of the “B5” group of leading business trade bodies. In the auditorium the chancellor gave little away about the budget, despite striking a markedly different tone to Burnham’s “in hock” comment from a year earlier – insisting that he and the prime minister were “in lockstep” in their commitment to balance the books. Shevaun Haviland, the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said Healey’s speech was “significant” because the chancellor had acknowledged that private enterprise was vital for helping the UK economy to grow.
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