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.