It rained pretty much all day in the City of London yesterday, but this didn’t stop Keir Starmer basking in the warm glow of success.
Despite complaints about a chaotic organising process in recent weeks, and a bit of real-time grumbling on the day itself, the Prime Minister’s investment summit was a triumph. A tightly choreographed triumph, but a triumph nonetheless.
Delegates at the summit could be heard to complain that the networking events weren’t a great use of their time, and take it from us the media access was painfully limited, but in the end what mattered was the announcements – and they came thick and fast.
A billion for Stansted, a billion for London Gateways’s port, billions for data centres, billions for clean energy, billions for infrastructure, everywhere you looked someone was inking a new multi-billion pound commitment. And this is all very welcome indeed.
Although, such was the pace of announcements it began to resemble the famous episode of Oprah when the eponymous host gave a car to everyone in the audience. “You get a car, and YOU get a car!” she shouted, as the euphoria levels rose.
What people often overlook about this famous moment of TV history is that when the dust settled, those lucky recipients were hit with a gift tax of $7,000. Might there be an equivalent fly in the ointment when the press releases have done their job and reality bites?
The Budget is hurtling towards us and we expect it to deliver a number of tax rises for business, including on the cost of employment through increased employer National Insurance contributions.
On top of this, the Employment Rights Bill will also make it harder and more expensive to create the much vaunted jobs of the future. Furthermore, it should be noted that on a day when Starmer rubbed shoulders with international CEOs, 500 start-up founders here in the UK wrote a letter to ministers warning that hiking Capital Gains Tax to 39 per cent, as has been reported, would “jeopardise the success of our country’s startup ecosystem” and “discourage entrepreneurs.”
The urgent warnings contained in this letter are given fresh weight in City AM today by the CEO of Helm, a network of 400 founders with a joint revenue of £8bn per year.
These are vital voices, and they should not be drowned out by the sound of Starmer and his ministers clinking glasses and toasting a successful day out in the City, however well deserved.