If Tories are ‘the party of business’, the PM should listen before it’s too late

‘Let me say it, loud and clear: the Conservative party is, and always will be, the party of business,’ declared Philip Hammond at Birmingham — a few hours after City tycoon and former Tory treasurer Michael Spencer told the BBC that the Prime Minister had ‘let herself down personally by not being a champion of business’. Were Spencer’s doubts assuaged by the Chancellor’s reassurance? I doubt it: the truth is Spencer was right.

Theresa May signalled her non–championship of business in her 2016 leadership bid when, ahead of John McDonnell, she spoke of forcing companies to accept worker representatives on boards and of the ‘irrational, unhealthy’ pay gap between top executives and average workers. Her people scrapped enterprise schemes sponsored by David Cameron in the Cabinet Office, while the Northern Powerhouse, George Osborne’s catalyst for commerce in Manchester and Leeds, went into the deep freeze. The Prime Minister appears to have no friends in the business world and no time for its concerns.