Where’s the beef? What Cameron has to do to win the business vote

Simon Nixon says the Conservatives should start saying a lot more about tax cuts and deregulation and a lot less about ‘work–life balance’

To see where business stands in the Conservative leadership’s current list of priorities, take a look at next week’s party conference agenda. The platform that used to proclaim the Thatcherite gospel of enterprise will this year debate whether to ban advertising to children and crack down on the booze trade. Instead of the traditional promise of a bonfire of red tape, the session devoted to ‘competitiveness’ will feature a homily on corporate social responsibility and a debate on ‘work-life balance’. Delegates will even be treated to a star turn by Will Hutton, the left-wing columnist and trenchant critic of Thatcherism.

This is clearly not an agenda aimed at big business or small business, let alone the self-employed. There is nothing here for fat cats, greedy cats or capitalist pigs. Cameron’s emphasis on ‘General Wellbeing’ — his favoured measure of economic success — is a manifesto for middle-class public sector workers and employees of big companies. It is directed at those sufficiently shielded from the effects of globalisation to worry more about lifestyle than about how to make a living — in other words, typical Lib Dem voters. This is the Tories rebranded as the Capitalist Workers Party: ‘Professionals of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your private health insurance, gym membership and extended maternity leave’.

Following Cameron’s earlier attacks on WH Smith for selling chocolate oranges and Topshop for selling ‘creepy’ clothes to young girls, and his declaration that he won’t be in the pocket of big business, it has been claimed the Tories are now anti-business. The suggestion makes the shadow trade and industry secretary Alan Duncan visibly agitated. ‘People say politicians need to understand business.