00:00 It was impossible to miss - a large green, yellow and blue off-road vehicle parked in
00:05 a prime spot in the exhibition hall at the Labour Party's annual conference.
00:10 The car belonged to INEOS, one of the world's largest chemical companies, and its outsize
00:15 presence - among dozens of businesses and organisations - marked the company's first
00:21 time attending the gathering.
00:23 Andrew Gardner, who runs INEOS's huge refinery complex in Grangemouth, Scotland, was standing
00:29 by the vehicle on Tuesday afternoon, grabbing time with passing Labour lawmakers to discuss
00:35 the company's goals.
00:36 He had never attended a Labour conference before, and skipped the governing Conservative
00:41 parties the previous week, but said he had come to this one, in the northern English
00:46 city of Liverpool, because Labour was expected to form the next government.
00:51 His colleague Richard Longden, INEOS's head of communications, chimed in, describing a
00:57 vibe here of a party that's changed, and one that's looking forward to the future.
01:02 "And business needs to be speaking to them and needs to be seen.
01:06 Which is exactly why we're here," Mr Gardner added.
01:10 In Britain, the Conservative Party has traditionally been seen as the party of business and the
01:15 guardians of free enterprise.
01:17 Now, under the centrist leadership of Keir Starmer, Labour is taking over that mantle.
01:23 As the party inches closer to power, with a general election expected next year, it
01:28 is engaged in a mutually beneficial love-in with the corporate sector.
01:33 At the four-day conference this week, attended by 18,500 people - British executives and
01:39 lobbyists representing industries from finance and technology to construction and defence
01:45 crammed into bars, corridors and meeting rooms as Labour made its pitch to be the undisputed
01:51 party of business - in the words of Jonathan Reynolds, a lawmaker who speaks for Labour
01:56 on the issue.
01:57 The record attendance was boosted by companies showing up for the first time, decamping from
02:03 their more familiar habitat of Conservative Party gatherings, including INEOS, whose CEO
02:09 and founder is the billionaire Brexit supporter Jim Ratcliffe.
02:13 Mr Gardner said that Labour was already saying 80 per cent of what he wanted to hear in terms
02:19 of decarbonising large-scale industry, as the company invests in reducing its carbon
02:24 emissions.
02:25 "That off-road vehicle was hydrogen-powered, but he was there to push for the last portion,
02:31 which was to lobby Labour not to end natural gas exploration in the North Sea too soon.
02:37 That message was slowly percolating," he said.
02:40 And there was some evidence that INEOS was being heard.
02:43 Rachel Reeves, who would become Britain's first female chancellor if Labour win next year,
02:49 mentioned Grain-Jemmeth in her speech to party members.
02:52 The party brought together about 200 executives on Monday at a forum within the conference
02:57 to meet would-be Cabinet ministers.
02:59 "What we are experiencing is a party who tell us that, if elected, they want to be business-friendly
03:05 government, that they want to work with the private sector in partnership," said Chris
03:10 Hayward, who speaks on policy questions for the City of London, Britain's historic financial
03:16 district.
03:17 At a reception on Tuesday evening held by Labour Business, a forum to engage with the
03:22 commercial sector, the mood was almost euphoric as guests sipped wine and ate canapé ~ a
03:28 copyrightess.
03:30 The group's chairman, Hamish Sanderson, said that not only had the tide turned in terms
03:35 of Labour's relationship with business, it had become a "tsunami".
03:39 "That enthusiasm partly reflects strained relations with the governing Conservatives,
03:44 particularly over Britain's exit from the European Union, which many big corporations
03:49 opposed."
03:50 Boris Johnson, a former prime minister, famously dismissed the concerns of businesses over Brexit
03:57 in crude terms.
03:58 His short-lived successor, Liz Truss, caused markets chaos with her plans for unfunded
04:04 tax cuts.
04:05 And although her successor, Rishi Sunak, restored some calm, he has recently upset
04:11 many businesses by abruptly changing targets on some net-zero plans and cancelling part
04:16 of a high-speed train network.
04:19 Labour has been on a journey, too.
04:21 Its previous leader, Jeremy Corbyn, promised nationalisation of key industries and big
04:26 increases in public spending funded by higher taxes.
04:30 That agenda has been unceremoniously junked by Mr Starmer, who became leader in 2020 and
04:37 moved to purge his predecessor.
04:39 Labour's shift attracted some surprising names, like JCB Hydrogen, an energy firm,
04:45 which handed out tote bags to party members.
04:48 Its chairman, Anthony Bamford, was a prominent supporter of Brexit and, during the last general
04:54 election in 2019, hosted a campaign event for Mr Johnson.
05:00 What draws many businesses to Labour is the prospect of a more stable policy environment,
05:06 which could be cemented by the party's plans for a long-term industrial strategy - an idea
05:11 that runs counter to Mr Sunak's free-market instincts.
05:14 Carl Innes, the head of Siemens in Britain and Ireland, was also at the Labour conference
05:20 for the first time.
05:22 He was there to lobby for an overarching and long-term approach, which was something that
05:27 the Conservatives were struggling to provide, he said.
05:30 "My job is to make the UK an attractive place for Siemens to invest its money in," he said,
05:36 adding that Labour's industrial strategy appealed to him.
05:40 "In every meeting room, businesses had the same central plea - give us consistency.
05:45 And the Labour Party was receptive," said Siobhan Haveland, the director-general of
05:50 the British Chambers of Commerce.
05:52 "We feel very positive that the party is listening to what we have to say and what our members
05:58 have to say," she said.
05:59 Ben Wilson, vice-president of public policy for Mastercard, said that his experience of
06:05 engaging with the party was indicative of how open Labour is to business, saying that
06:10 he and other executives had the opportunity to discuss policies that could form part of
06:15 the platform of the next government.
06:18 All this has revived memories of the 1990s when, in the years before Tony Blair became
06:23 prime minister, the party wooed business over lunches and dinners in what was nicknamed
06:29 the Prawn Cocktail Offensive.
06:31 This time much of the interaction has been over breakfast with Miss Reeves, nicknamed
06:36 the Scrambled Eggs and Smoked Salmon Offensive.
06:38 "Ever since I became shadow chancellor I've had the same to reach out to business," Miss
06:43 Reeves, a former economist at the Bank of England, said at a small event on the sidelines
06:49 of the conference.
06:50 "A lot of the businesses that I've met over the last two and a half years would have seen,
06:55 in some of the announcements this week, their fingerprints on our policies."
07:00 While some on the left of the party were unnerved by the dominant presence of business and its
07:05 influence on future policy, other supporters suggested it was the inevitable result of
07:10 Labour's double-digit poll lead.
07:13 "Businesses are here in numbers," said Stephen Kinsella, a former antitrust lawyer and Labour
07:19 donor.
07:20 "There are a lot of people who want to back a winner, think they have spotted a winner
07:24 and realize they need to get to know the people who are going to be there.
