There is something exquisitely British about watching a government try to persuade the very people it is trying to trick. Like spreading out the good cookies before the bailiffs come.
And so we have Sir Keir Starmer – a man whose natural environment lies somewhere between a select committee hearing and an apologetic queue at Pret – inviting the bigwigs of British business to No 10 for what Downing Street insists is an “informal reception”.
NatWest, Sage, Marks & Spencer, Taylor Wimpey, Octopus Energy… all the well-known names marched dutifully through the famous black door, like polite wedding guests who know full well the groom is the wrong one but bought a gift from the list anyway because it’s tradition. And what did they get for their trouble? A drink, a handshake and the creeping realization that Rachel Reeves is sharpening her financial guillotine for November 26th.
Because let’s be honest: British corporations are not stupid. You can sense a tax raid long before it strikes. Businesses across the country have been prepared for this budget since Reeves first took office at the Treasury Department last year, when she raised employer welfare and the minimum wage so aggressively that you could practically hear the collective groan of every payroll clerk in the country. You will recall that in about nine minutes this Budget destroyed the laborious courtship that Labor had undertaken in the post-Corbyn years – a kind of political couples therapy designed to reassure business leaders that the party had indeed changed; no, no one came for their yachts; Yes, they could come out from behind the sofa.
Starmer’s welcome this week was intended to be a reassuring gesture – a warm hug before the cold reality of a £30bn black hole in the public finances emerges. But the whole thing had the air of a family doctor briefly offering you a lollipop before telling you they’re going to remove your leg “for safety reasons.”
What Reeves is reportedly considering next would make even Gordon Brown blush. An income tax hike muddled with manifestos (because who needs promises?). A full-scale attack on limited partnerships (sorry, lawyers; sorry, accountants; most people won’t regret it at all). And, my personal favorite, a crackdown on pension systems that forgo wage sacrifices – those clever little mechanisms that companies use to keep costs down without employees having to live on canned tomatoes.
So yeah, the mood in the room wasn’t exactly “Christmas at Liberty.” It was more like an “annual meeting of people who know the bill is coming but haven’t decided who will pay.”
The tragedy here – and it is a tragedy in the classic British sense of being completely predictable and yet somehow depressing – is that Labor really did have the business community on their side. For a hot minute, Starmer and Reeves were the sensible adults. The ones who wouldn’t crash the economy in a fit of ideological anger. Those who wouldn’t treat FTSE companies like enemies of the state. Those who, we are told, “understand how wealth is created.” (And then, three months later, they taxed the people who created it.)
But credibility, like a good steak, is hard won and can easily be ruined. And Starmer’s government appears determined to drive them to their deaths with the sharp end of a political fork.
The Prime Minister’s great hope is that business leaders are, at heart, desperate for stability – so desperate that they will accept any number of tax rises as long as they are announced in full sentences rather than the feverish scribblings of their predecessors in government. There is a certain amount of truth in this. Companies like predictability. It likes adults. It wants the light to stay on when the switch is pressed.
But there’s a limit to how much you can tell people to do before they start thinking seriously about the joys of Dublin. And Reeves’ recent speech, in which she solemnly told us all that “each of us must do our part to ensure our country’s security and our country’s bright future,” felt a little like telling him to wash someone else’s dishes because “we’re all family here.”
Downing Street, of course, declined to comment on the guest list, which is Whitehall code for “everyone involved is angry but no one wants to go first”. But I suspect that behind the forced smiles and warm white wine, Britain’s top managers have been quietly pondering how much this government will cost them – and whether it will even be worth it.
Because while Starmer may believe a few evenings of canapés can repair the damage, business leaders know better. Confidence in politics is not restored through receptions; During the reconstruction, care will be taken to avoid changing direction every time the wind blows across Horse Guards Parade.
And unless Reeves pulls a business rabbit out of her red box later this month, only Britain’s most mobile – and highest taxed – companies will jump out of number 10.
