Labour gains business support as half of leaders prefer Starmer-led Government
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Half of business leaders have said they would prefer a Labour Government under Sir Keir Starmer to a Conservative one led by Rishi Sunak.
The polling by Opinium found that a quarter of business leaders who voted for the Tories at the 2019 general election were now backing Sir Keir’s party.
The findings come as Labour prepares to hold a major business event this week, with 600 executives, investors, and ambassadors flocking to a conference in London on Thursday, indicating that many bosses expect the party to form the next government.
Labour commissioned Opinium to conduct an online survey with a sample of 500 business leaders and senior decision-makers, with respondents spread across micro, small, medium, and large businesses.
Within the sample, 44 per cent said they had backed the Tories in the 2019 election, compared to 27 per cent who had supported Labour.
However, asked for their preferred outcome at the coming general election, the positions had reversed, with 49 per cent preferring “a Labour government led by Keir Starmer” compared to 34 per cent who wanted “a Conservative government led by Rishi Sunak”.
Of the 220 business leaders who had backed the Tories in 2019, 55 (25 per cent) said they now wanted a Labour victory.
‘Loss of trust’
The polling was similar when the business leaders were asked about the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and the shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves. Forty-eight per cent said they would trust Ms Reeves more to manage the economy, compared to 34 per cent who opted for Mr Hunt.
The survey found that 69 per cent agreed with the statement that the Tories had “lost the trust of the business community”, compared to 25 per cent who disagreed. Two-thirds (66 per cent) also agreed that the Tories were “out of ideas” compared to 28 per cent who disagreed.
The shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds said the findings showed that “business has given up on the Conservative Party” and “lost faith in them”.
“Business wants stability more than anything,” he said. “I think we’re in a really unusual position where I think business is looking to a change of government for greater stability than the continuation of the present one.”
On Thursday, Labour will hold a conference featuring 400 business leaders and a further 200 international investors and ambassadors.
The conference is three times the size of a similar business event Labour held last year, with each ticket costing nearly £1,000 excluding VAT and the whole event selling out in just four hours.
High profile attendees include the president of the British Chambers of Commerce Baroness Lane-Fox, Google’s UK managing director Debbie Weinstein, and the chief executive of Siemens in the UK and Ireland, Carl Ennis.
Earlier this month, Mr Reynolds was in Switzerland with Ms Reeves wooing global business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
He revealed he had taken the opportunity to ask international companies whether they would “consider listing in the UK”.
He said: “If there’s a room I’ve got to get into, to get more business investment, more inward investment into the UK, to tell people about what a Labour government would mean for them if they’re interested, I’m happy to be in that room.”
