Ex-Tory adviser to devise plan for UK business ‘partnership’ with future Labour government

A former adviser to Boris Johnson has been charged by Labour with drawing up a plan to bring business into the heart of government, if the party wins the next election.

Iain Anderson, who quit the Conservatives last year after becoming disillusioned with the ruling party, told the Financial Times he had been asked to give small companies a stronger voice alongside big business and the unions.

The founder of Cicero public relations group, who was “LGBT business champion” in Johnson’s government, said: “‘Small co’ doesn’t feel like it has a voice. This is about everybody getting an ability to make a pitch.”

Jonathan Reynolds, shadow business secretary, has asked Anderson to draw up a report in the next few months laying out how to make good on Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s promise of a “partnership” with corporate Britain.

“If we do come into government, you will be coming into government with us,” Starmer told a room of 200 businesspeople, who paid nearly £2,000 each to attend a forum at this week’s Labour conference in Liverpool.

The party’s focus on small business is in contrast to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s flagship business advisory council, formed in July and comprising the chief executives of 13 FTSE 100 companies and Google DeepMind.

The group met for less than 45 minutes in July and is due to convene just once every six months, limiting the opportunity for detailed discussions, according to people at some of the companies involved. 

Anderson said business was tired of the “on-off” relationship with successive Tory prime ministers, with constantly changing messages and structures. “In the future, the relationship will always be on,” he added.

“We’ve got to move on from synthetic photo opportunities — the ‘high vis/hard hat’ culture — where you get a call asking if you have a factory, an office or a production line for a minister to visit,” he said. “There’s a picture and then the cavalcade returns to Whitehall.”

Reynolds wants to explore how business and unions can be brought together with government to discuss common problems, but Anderson said there would not be a return to the “tripartite” corporatist model of the 1970s.

“We are looking for a modern economy and we want to remove some of the ‘them and us’ attitude that has built up in recent times,” he added. “But this will be a structure for 2023 — it’s not about going back to the future.

“One of the things I currently see is the business relationship run out of a broom cupboard in Number 10. That’s not what we need for a modern economy.”

Anderson, who was a Tory party member for 39 years, insisted he had not switched allegiance simply to help his business, now called H/Advisors Cicero, should Labour win the next election.

“I could have done this when Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were in their pomp,” he said, referring to the two Labour prime ministers when the party was last in power between 1997 and 2010. “It would probably have been a sensible business decision. But so much has changed.”

Meanwhile, Anderson said he was disappointed to see half a dozen Conservative cabinet ministers — and Sunak himself — making political points about gender and trans issues at this month’s Tory conference.

Anderson, who quit as Boris Johnson’s “LGBT business champion” in 2022 citing a lack of progress on equalities issues, said: “A culture war is not good for this country. I’m just very sad to see that happening.”

Although business leaders appear to be flocking to Labour in recent months, any new economic forums set up by Starmer and Reynolds are likely to include some difficult conversations.

Labour has unveiled an extensive package of worker rights that it would seek to implement if it wins power, including a ban on zero-hours contracts and additional protections for staff from their first day of employment. 

But Craig Beaumont of the Federation of Small Businesses welcomed Labour’s approach. “This review is another clear signal of reassurance and ambition from an incoming Labour government.

“We especially welcome enshrining small businesses, which make up 99 per cent of businesses, within it.” A spokesman for Reynolds said he would take Anderson’s report into consideration in framing new structures for business relations.