UK politics live: Keir Starmer says Labour sees business as force for good in CBI speech

In response to a Commons urgent question on Channel crossing, Priti Patel, the home secretary, accused Labour of supporting “unlimited migration”. She told MPs:

If any members have concrete proposals that are not already featured in the new plan for immigration, I would be happy to discuss and meet with them because my door is always open, particularly to those members on the opposite benches.

Because of course they attack the new plan for immigration, they have not supported it, they voted against it and not because they are genuinely frustrated at the number of illegal migrants entering our country like those on this side of the House and the British public, but because they will always stand up for unlimited migration, free movement and they always said that and will do.

Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow home secretary, accused Patel of breaking her promises to reduce the number of people crossing the Channel in this way. He said:

As the home secretary knows, the government has already spent over £200m of taxpayers’ money on deals with the French authorities that are not working …

The home secretary has repeatedly made pledges that the route across the Channel will be made unviable, but as usual with this Government it is all empty rhetoric and broken promises.

The home secretary has blamed everyone but herself.

Radical plans ranging from strict restrictions on second home ownership to setting up a publicly owned energy company and driving forward a free nationwide social care system have been announced in an agreement between the Labour-led Welsh government and the nationalists, Plaid Cymru. My colleague Steven Morris has the story here.

The CBI normally invite both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition to speak at their annual conference and in most years – last year was an exception because of Covid – this ends up as something of a beauty contest, with both main parties vying for the affection of business (or at least the CBI, the big business corporate establishment, which is not quite the same thing). Rarely, though, does one party win so conclusively. Boris Johnson’s speech will be remembered for his eccentric Peppa Pig riff and for the fact that he lost his way half way through. By comparison, Keir Starmer exuded seriousness and responsibility, and told his audience exactly what they wanted to hear. As Lord Bilimoria, the CBI president, wrapped up his panel discussion with Starmer, his words of appreciation were heading towards ‘get a room’ levels of intensity. (See 2.43pm.)

Did the speech deserve this amount of praise? Probably not, although it does show how far, with the right audience, you can get just by not being Boris Johnson (or Jeremy Corbyn). The new announcements in the speech were relatively limited, but the tone was important, and Starmer gave the clearest account we have yet had of how Labour would renegotiate Brexit. It would end up softer.

In his superb book on the “red wall” and Labour’s electoral plight, Broken Heartlands, a Journey through Labour’s Lost England, the FT journalist Sebastian Payne quotes Tony Blair on the problems that Labour in the UK, and the Democrats in the US, have on the economy. Blair says:

The problem is they don’t have a modernising economic message, their economic message is basically a bigger state, and more tax and more spending. The problem with that is the only part of that that’s popular is the spending and the right wing is prepared to do that in any event.

If Labour wants to get back, it’s got to say this technology revolution is going to intensify and accelerate, there’s no way out of it. We’re going to manage it and harness it in your best interests, and here are the things we’re going to do for that.

The Starmer speech did not lay out the sort of distinctive, and electorally attractive, policy that Blair seems to be demanding. But in what he said about the need for a new offer on skills, Starmer did seem to be looking pointing towards this direction.

Here are the main points.

• Starmer insisted that Labour now sees business as a “force for good”. He said:

We are not just pro business as two words, we actually believe in business as a force for good in itself. Sometimes, if I may say so, our party has come across as thinking that business is to be tolerated in some way, but not to be celebrated as a good in itself. That mindset has changed under my leadership, and under Rachel Reeves [the shadow chancellor]. That sets up the sort of active, supportive relationship that we need going forward.

• He said the UK needed a “national reset” after Covid, and that this required business and politicians to work together.

• He set out details of how Labour would set out to improve trading relations with the EU. He did not propose a full overhaul of UK-EU free trade deal, but taken together his proposals would make Brexit noticeably softer than it is now. (See 1.56pm.)

• He announced he is setting up a councils of skills advisers to ensure pupils leave school with the skills they need for the 21st century workforce. (See 2.17pm.) Skills would be a priority for him, he said.

Better skills are vital if we are to improve productivity and economic growth.

That’s why getting the next generation ready for work will be my mission as leader of the Labour party.

• He acccused Johnson of staging “pantomime disputes” with the EU. (See 1.56pm.)

• Starmer implicitly criticised Johnson for his what is seen as his “fuck business” approach (based on something Johnson once said in private – he insists he was misrepresented). Starmer said the only f-words he would use with business were foreign investment, fair trade, fiscal policy, a fiduciary duty.

• He criticised Johnson for suggesting Covid was to blame for the UK’s poor productivity problems, saying that the problem went back far longer and that the UK has had “the worst decade for productivity growth since the industrial revolution”.

This is from my colleague Peter Walker, who was at Keir Starmer’s CBI speech and who has been gauging reaction.

In her speech to the Margaret Thatcher Conference on Trade, held by the Centre for Policy Studies thinktank, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the international trade secretary, rejected claims that the UK is “little Britain”. Describing her trade policy, she said:

It is a strategy not looking just at the next headline, the next quarter, or the next year, but realising there’s opportunities ahead in the decades to come. It will make exporting easier for businesses … and bring prosperity to every region and nation of our country.

Now, just as in Mrs Thatcher’s time, there are the naysayers and the doom-mongers who claim that we are little Britain – too slow, too weak, too inexperienced. But, and with the greatest respect to Matt Lucas, we are not little Britain, and we never were. We are global Britain.

Lord Bilimoria, the CBI president, is now wrapping up the panel discussion, summarising the topics Starmer covered.

He says what Starmer said about skills and creativity was “music to my ears”. And says he loved the way Starmer talked about business as a “force for good”. It has been amazing, he says.

And that’s it.

I will post a summary shortly.

Starmer says he wants regional political leaders to play a much bigger role in deciding investment decisions.

He says at least Theresa May’s government had an industrial strategy. He says the current government ripped it up.

Asked about claims that Labour over-spending contributed to the financial crash of 2008, Starmer says he does not accept that. He says Gordon Brown did as much as anyone to limit the global damage. And he says UK annual growth was much higher under Labour than it has been in last decade.

In the panel discussion Lord Bilimoria, president of the CBI, says relations between business and Labour are “much improved” since Keir Starmer took over as leader.

Starmer says he is glad Bilimoria said that. He says he wanted a reset.

He says he sees business as a “force for good’. In the past Labour sometimes implied business was something “to be tolerated”, not “to be celebrated as a good in itself”. He says, under his leadership, and with Rachel Reeves as shadow chancellor, that has changed.

Starmer said in his speech that the new council of skills advisers he is setting up for the party will “recommend the change we need to ensure everyone leaves education job ready and life ready, explore how to ensure that young people are literate in the technology of the day [and] raise the sights of all pupils”.

In a news release, Labour says the group – David Blunkett, Rachel Sandby-Thomas and Praful Nargund – will “rethink how we deliver an education fit for the 21st century”.

Blunkett, a former education secretary and home secretary, said:

I am very pleased to be able to continue contributing to the critical debate about how we modernise and reform the lifelong learning journey from schools through to progression in work.

Nothing can be more important than spreading what works, embedding high-quality and inspirational teaching and learning, and adapting a curriculum that provides motivation to young people at every stage, and reassurance to employers that they will have literate, numerate, creative and responsive employees for the future.

Having taken questions from two journalists, Starmer is now taking part in a panel discussion. He is again stressing the importance of politicians and businesses working together.