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Labour needs a prawn cocktail offensive for all businesses, not just small firms

February 12, 2012 9:10 pm

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Both Jacqui Smith and Dermot Finch have written in recent days about the need for Labour to embark on a new “prawn cocktail offensive” to charm the business community. I agree with Jacqui and Dermot and I’m optimistic about the reception Labour is likely to receive from the business community, provided we have the courage to engage with all businesses – small firms, mid-caps and large corporates.

This doesn’t mean deviating from the responsible capitalism agenda. If business wants more meaningful engagement with politicians then it must help drive reform and demonstrate it is not run by “aliens”, as former CBI head Sir Richard Lambert put it. But the risk for Labour is that the debate about predators and producers is heard by the business community as “big business bad, small business/enterprise good”.

The coalition has given Labour an opportunity here. Many CEOs, including outside financial services, feel like pariahs. They think ministers neither understand their businesses nor want to be associated with them. This disengagement started with the Conservatives in opposition; I heard senior business figures say they could pick up the phone and speak to Gordon Brown more easily than they could speak to David Cameron. Business leaders today bemoan the absence of a Geoffrey Norris figure in Number 10 and a business secretary with the clout to fight their corner in Whitehall.

So far, Labour’s tentative steps towards developing a policy programme for business have focussed on small firms, including the small business taskforce chaired by Nigel Doughty. There are signs that Labour is also beginning to think about the M in SMEs. Ed Miliband referenced Germany’s Mittelstand in his Reuters speech last week and Chuka Umunna has just returned from a trip there. Labour needs to build on this and develop a narrative and policy proposals to appeal to medium and large businesses.

I’m optimistic that Ed Miliband understands this. When I worked for Richard Lambert at the CBI, Ed was the only leadership candidate who agreed to meet Richard. Ed is supported by a strong economic and business team; Ed Balls, Rachel Reeves and Chuka Umunna are already out talking to business audiences. Other members of the shadow cabinet such as Liam Byrne (who ran Labour’s business engagement before the 1997 election and started his own business before becoming an MP) can speak convincingly to business people.

Here are my tips for Labour as it begins to rebuild its business support.

First, make better use of talent in the party. Senior backbenchers like Alastair Darling and Pat McFadden, and others in the party like Peter Mandelson, command the respect of business figures and could be used as emissaries for the leadership.

Second, some more practical business experience at the adviser level would be welcome (full disclosure: I once applied for a job with Chuka’s predecessor John Denham).

Third, harness the enthusiasm and ideas of activists and grassroots projects like Labour’s Business.

And finally…don’t try to please Digby Jones. It will never happen.

  • Anonymous

    ”
    First, make better use of talent in the party. Senior backbenchers like Alastair Darling and Pat McFadden, and others in the party like Peter Mandelson, command the respect of business figures and could be used as emissaries for the leadership.”

    I think you still are a Conservative at heart. You start off by referencing Jacqui Smith a now disgraced ex-minister and MP bought down by the expenses scandal. DVDs in box rooms anyone?.  If that wasn’t enough you the mention furniture loving McFadden:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/5581730/MPs-expenses-Pat-McFadden-claimed-thousands-on-stamp-duty-and-furniture.html

    You go on to speak of Darling – another expenses scandal besmirched “honourable” member who recently spoke out about how nasty we were being to bankers. As for Mandelson, as I assume your tongue was planted firmly in your cheek, I won’t even bother to start enumerating his various misdemeanours.

    Interesting that this convert to the Labour party should be taken by so many shop-soiled has-beens.

    Go home,  Mr. Allan: Blairism has gone and it’s not coming back

  • Anonymous

    ”
    First, make better use of talent in the party. Senior backbenchers like Alastair Darling and Pat McFadden, and others in the party like Peter Mandelson, command the respect of business figures and could be used as emissaries for the leadership.”

    I think you are a Conservative at heart. You start off by referencing Jacqui Smith a now disgraced ex-minister and MP bought down by the expenses scandal. DVDs in box rooms anyone?.  If that wasn’t enough you the mention furniture loving McFadden:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/5581730/MPs-expenses-Pat-McFadden-claimed-thousands-on-stamp-duty-and-furniture.html

    You go on to speak of Darling – another expenses scandal besmirched “honourable” member who recently spoke out about how nasty we were being to bankers. As for Mandelson, as I assume your tongue was planted firmly in your cheek, I won’t even bother to start enumerating his various misdemeanours.

    Interesting that you should be taken by so many shop-soiled has-beens.

    Go home,  Mr. Allan: Blairism has gone and it’s not coming back

    • Alex Smith

      Hi Alan, 

      This sort of attitude really frustrates me. In referring to certain individuals from Labour’s history, Robert is not endorsing their personalities or every aspect of their politics necessarily. He is just saying that these people have strengthened Labour’s relationships and perceptions within business. That’s valuable. Please try not to play the man on these issues — Robert’s piece raises a serious point about the need for Labour to interact more with big and medium business and not fall into a small enterprise only trap. That’s an important contribution. Labelling him a Conservative is not helpful.

      Alex

      • Daniel Speight

         Yes, I’m playing the man here also Alex. Haven’t you and your  pro-business ideas been discredited by your mate’s recent decision to join the Tories?

        • Alex Smith

          On the contrary: I think it shows quite how far we have to travel to get pro-business people to join and stay with us.

          • Anonymous

            Evening Alex- good to see you here for a change!

            Hope all is well.

            Could I just add maybe the whole concept of “business”
            has to be redefined in Labour circles- eg more broadly,
            more community focused.

            I think it’s what people associate in their mind with big business, as if it’s an all or nothing thing?

            I also don’t think the image of Peter M or TB in recent years has done us any favours in this respect- eg celebrity status
            and associating with what appears to be enormous wealth and influence.That’s not how I want the Labour party to remain, rather a return to its more humble roots!

            Sorry a bit rushed now as signing off- but just wanted to say hi; also to say most of the guys here are quite friendly and hopefully open to debate!

            Personally I have no problem with the idea of business;
            I have 2 brothers who have built up their own over many years- and it’s hard slog- but can be very rewarding; and there is indeed  a lot of scope for ideas and different ways of working.

            Best, Jo.

          • Anonymous

            Alex Smith is former communications adviser to Ed Miliband, and editor of LabourList. He is a director at Future First, and a consultant for Champollion Digital.
            http://www.futurefirst.org.uk/
            http://champollion.co.uk/

          • derek

            Moody’s has down rated Britain borrowing to negative and Osborne comes out to say his plan is working? business, it’s all brass monkey jiggery pokery.

          • Daniel Speight

             Alex you are probably correct. We need to move further to the right so people like your mate have no need to join the Tories.

            Funny how nobody realized this in the first one hundred years of the Party. It would have be so much easier to have become the party of business rather than the party of labour.

          • Anonymous

            With all due respect Alex, just how much further do you want them to go?. The option of selling peerages no longer exists, and surely a party shouldn’t just jettison whole swathes of it’s support just to accomodate the ego of City gents?

      • Anonymous

        Hello Alex:

        Perhaps not to you, but to me the mention of Jacqui Smith, Mandelson,  and even McFaddan and Darling reminds me of the disgrace these and other politicians bought on their profession with the expenses scandal. Labour politicians were just as bad as the Tories and LibDems

        All this high-falutin’ talk of prawn cocktails (that’s a real throwback to the mid 90s!) seems to me, to be a plea to return to the “values” of Tony Blair.
        I wonder if you have read the self-important verbiage of Mr  Finch, who works in the PR industry and gives us the benefit of his self-importance in a blog (just Google).

        If Labour REALLY wants to reconnect with it’s grass root supporters (which they have been losing) this sort of pretentious stuff is not the way to do it.  I would put it to you Mandelson and Darling inter-act with the City very well, because they either are – or aspire to be – part of the show.

        Let’s be frank about it:  Lord this and Lady that who sit on the boards of several different companies are hardly likely to support the Labour party, whatever they did. In 1997 the main reason a lot of Tories voted for Blair was not because they went for the colour of his eye-shadow: they knew the Tories had had it by 1997 and in Blair they recognized the next best thing (and were’nt they right!)

  • Daniel Speight

    It may come as a surprise to some but the Labour Party was not founded to support either big or small business. The clue is in the name. That doesn’t mean the party has to be in constant bickering with business interests, but these companies do have their own natural representatives. Right at this moment the people Labour should be representing are suffering because actions taken by one section of big business.

    • Anonymous

      To mention two politician who are now either out the door or sitting in the back of the room. Labour has to do more to get back the five million who walked away and gave labour the worse bloody nose in modern history, it was given that bloody nose for a reason.

      It also has to end this seek the Tories out, we have enough people with degrees who are coming over from the Tories because they failed in the great Millionaire party, now see labour as second best, tell us they saw the light and have now moved here you do not join the Tory party by mistake thinking it’s a socialist party.

      I just think more Jam and less prawns more working class and less private class

  • http://twitter.com/gonzozzz dave stone

    Looks like nostalgia for a 1997 dream-land.

    That’s all very well for those who are unable to manage anything else but it’s not something on which an election winning strategy can be based.Amusingly New Labour are now beginning to resemble the far left.The far left can be seen as a 1917 re-enactment society and the New Labour residuals  now resemble a 1997 re-enactment society. They share more than they might imagine!

    • Anonymous

      New labour does seem to be going that way, I wonder if they have meetings to discuss what the Prophet Blair is saying.

      • http://twitter.com/gonzozzz dave stone

        If you’re speaking to a Blairite and criticise Blair for taking us into the Iraq war you’ll be met with a response very similar to that of a Trotskyist defending Trotsky’s role in the Kronstadt rebellion. 

        Each sect identifies the same infallibility in their leader. 

        • Anonymous

          You’re right, of course, Dave, but it really is about time the Blairites got over him – it’s as sad as those old Tories who still wanted Mrs Thatcher back a decade after she had gone; thanks to them it  kept the Tories out for 13 years – I am sure that isn’t what the Blairites want as they enjoy “power” so much – and there is their problem: they and their idol always put power before principle. It is as if Blair was the biggest confidence trickster going – they just don’t seem to see him for the liar, the greedy self-righteous creep that he was, the man who would do anything, betray any principle if the price was right, and it is significant that his biggest supporters – Byers, Hoon Hewitt were bought down by copying his methods. I always wish their mentor could have been as destroyed by Channel 4 as they were

          It is a worrying trend though to see Blears and D Miliband creeping back on the scene – two not especially attractive examples of the species, and of course Blears tap-dancing partner, Caroline Flint has never been away.

          • http://twitter.com/gonzozzz dave stone

            I’m sure that for Blairites whatever the question there’s only one answer. But times have moved on. And got much harder.

            What worked in ’97 won’t work today. The Labour vote declined steadily from ’97 onward and finished almost 5 million down.

            For some it’s very tempting but a retreat into a New Labour comfort zone is an ideological luxury that is no longer viable. There has to be a major re-engagement with the electorate.

          • Anonymous

            What I find incredible, Dave is that, in his patronising, pompous way David Miliband spoke dispariginly of “reassurance Labour”, yet that is exactly what he is prescribing, in thinking he and his pals can tart up the past  today to work tomorrow – and clearly Mr Allen agrees with him. I don’t think D Miliband or Mr Allen  would be capable of re-engaging with the electorate especially not the core vote

          • http://twitter.com/gonzozzz dave stone

            I see what you mean. However, there’s a peculiar contradiction that might provide a solution: a re-engagement with the electorate will require a less insistently ideological approach.

            The Blairites, if they want electoral success, will have to drop or seriously moderate their ideological position. Therefore they’ll no longer be Blairites.

            Problem solved.

            In the meantime, support Ed.

          • Anonymous

            I wish Ed well, Dave, but you have to wonder whether his brother does. DM wants to be the band leader, not the third trumpet

  • John Ruddy

    Why do we need to do that, when the first “Prawn Cocktail offensive” didnt really work – remember, it was done by John Smith as Shadow Chancellor before the 92 election – not by Tony & Gordon before 97.

    What business really needs is certainty. Tell them with conviction that X and Y are going to happen after the election and thats all they really need.

  • Anonymous

    No Davey, I just wondered why so many discredited, grubby politicians (some of them thankfully now defunct as politicians) were referenced in this article.

    As  Daniel pointed out it earlier, any government needs to be on cordial terms with business but it is not really the remit of Labour to wet-nurse pampered City gents, and I don’t think it will do the party’s credibility much good if they are seen to be getting up to their old tricks again, by promoting those who were so tainted.

    May 2009 is less than 3 years ago, but it is amazing how many people have forgotten the disgust and distaste most honest people felt over the expenses scandal

  • Anonymous

    Excellent article.

    I think Labour are in a tricky position; eg post New Lab- and all the associations/
    narrative. Eg media commentary about GB/the 2008 banking crash/current right wing
    policy around “austerity” measures.

    This is contrasted to public demo’s and wider dialogue about co orporate greed and practices; huge gap between low and high paid across all sectors; vested interests, etc.

    Then the real problems about unemployment, hiked tuition fees, scrapping EMA’s, and an onslaught on the public sector/frontline services and worker/anti union rhetoric etc.
    Tabloid media stuff and divisive politics about private vs public sector workers and pensions….

    Ed M has made a bold foray into this territory, eg by addressing the people’s march last year- and making an excellent speech about responsible capitalism at the conference- which all parties have since tried to seize agenda and claim credit for?

    Presumably that’s because the public are suffering disproportionately, and there is resentment about high pay and privelege?

    Also- Occupy; and the AB Rowan W’s intervention and writing- highly compelling.
    I think he filled a space the politicians would fear to tread- but realise they have to say and do something to address the economic and social reality?

    As you suggest Robert- when Labour was last in power- it was indeed seen as business friendly.But there were faults- eg lack of regulation- which we can now see in hindsight.

    Also- Peter M’s comments about being very comfortable alongside the “filthy rich”
    perhaps conveyed being out of touch and very much part of an elitist class?

    I think New Lab become too big and out of touch- although many good acheivements too.

    As for business- I agree, within the remit of “responsible capitalism” there is a lot of scope.

    Labour could actually lead the way- for example, exploring possibilities for growth and innovation in manufacturing and technologies/green industry.

    Skills base for young and older people- re training, apprenticeships.

    Ideas for building up town centres, protecting enviroment, renovation of old and historic buildings for housing and renewal purposes.

    Networking and expanding skills and experience in communities- eg on specific projects, where there is an identified need.

    Linking to co operative ventures- different sectors working together.

    Finally, challenging the co orporate big business culture and power base.

    For example- the monopoly of supermarkets over smaller local businesses and traders,
    which can literally suck the life out of village and small town centres.

    Currently it’s a very tough climate, as we all know.
    Even some of the well known brands on the high street are closing down.
    I’ve come across 3 in the past fortnight, and local traders in our area
    say business went down with the effect of a giant supermarket being built in the middle
    of town; also the only people who seem to be able afford retail units are charity shops!

    Our wonderful traditional market was also closed down, presumably by short sighted actions of council- looking for greater profits.

    Anyway, there are many facets to this- but I think huge scope.

    My greatest inspiration has always been France- in the villages and towns;
    local people and skilled artisans/crafts people owning units and selling their wares-
    totally geared up to the needs of that area; also attracting visitors- with wonderful food,
    cafe’s, crafts, and organic produce.
    We’ve travelled quite a bit there over the years, and have noticed that communities appear much more cohesive, have great pride in their products and enviroment,
    and are far more robust about how they want their vicinity to be run.

    For example- large supermarkets and retail parks- always well away from the main centres so as not to uglify or detract from local businesses, I’m presuming.
    And even there- a huge choice of organic produce; farming seems to be much more supported there too- and probably provides much employment.

    It’s the joined up thinking and integration, not top down approach from big business,
    which I think could really energise the wealth of talent and experience in this country-
    of all age groups- but especially jobs for the younger generation.

    A lot of this shortsighted approach started in the 80′s- with too much of a reliance on the financial sector, and erosion of manufacturing, farming etc.A lot of skills were lost, and probably whole communities suffered terribly with so many job losses impacting on families; widening the poverty gap.
    I think we are still living with that legacy, economically, socially and culturally.
    It may take another 30 years to make real progress.

    Thanks, Jo.

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