It is typical of this stuttering and under-prepared government that the build-up to today’s international investment summit, an event that should have been the perfect opportunity to reset Britain’s badly damaged international reputation, was so littered with own goals.
First there was the row about the failure to invite the world’s richest man, and arguably its most influential business leader, Elon Musk. Initially we were told it was because of his admittedly inflammatory and inappropriate comments about the summer riots, although this has now morphed into the rather lame excuse that “he doesn’t do these sort of events.” Well we know that he does, as he was perfectly happy to sit down with Rishi Sunak for a rather awkward interview at the AI summit last November. There maybe much to dislike about the Tesla boss but it is important that the Government is not actively making him even less likely to invest here.
Then there was the lamentable handling of DP World’s £1 billion investment in London Gateway. Whatever Louise Haigh’s personal views about DP World owned P&O Ferries “hire and fire” controversy of 2022, this was just not the moment to go piling in with calls for a boycott of the “rogue operator” company.
Third, was the misnaming of former Google boss Eric Schmidt, whom Keir Starmer will chat with on the summit stage today, as Ed Schmidt. That was not on the scale of the DP World fiasco but just smacks of a clumsy lack of rigour at the heart of Government.
Today’s summit in the sumptuous surroundings of the City’s Guildhall is a fabulous shop-window for the UK, which has been out of favour with the global investment community since Brexit, a golden chance to prove we are serious players once again.
The election has opened up a small window of opportunity. Global investors were dismayed by what they saw as the dysfunctional politics of the era of the “five Prime Ministers” when years of chaos hugely harmed the UK brand. They see in Keir Starmer, a sensible moderate who talks a good game about growth and can provide up to five years of stable Government.
As the letter in The Times from the heads of some of the world’s biggest banks, private equity firms and tech firms showed, this is a moment when the global investors are prepared to give the UK the benefit of the doubt once again.
For the sake of the British economy Labour cannot afford to drop the ball, either today at the investment summit, or in a couple of weeks time in Rachel Reeves’s Budget.
Downing Street needs to get its act together, cut out the ill-discipline and self- indulgence that has plagued the first 100 days of the Starmer regime and reach at least minimum standards of competence. A return to economic growth was the number one pledge of the new Prime Minister, and he is right to put it at the top of Labour’s agenda. But without clearly demonstrating that there is a functioning high calibre machine at the heart of Government the world’s investment community will quickly grow disillusioned once again, and look elsewhere.
