Any admirer of the United Kingdom knows of the passion that many Britons have with their trains, fundamental in the drive and historical development of the industrial revolution. That is why it is inexplicable to the layman that high speed, unlike other European countries, is almost non-existent on the island. One figure is enough to understand this mystery: every kilometer of the HS2 project (High Speed Rail 2) that connected London with Birmingham cost 212 million euros, compared to the 119 million cost, for example, of the Lyon-Turin route undertaken by the French and Italian governments.
“We are going to get rid of all that bureaucracy that blocks investment, and we are going to make sure that all the regulatory bodies in this country, especially the economic and competition regulators, take growth seriously as much as all of us who do. “We are in this room,” said British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to the representatives of banks, investment funds and multinational giants – more than 200 – gathered this Monday at the International Investors Summit held at Guildhall, the palace that usually host major City of London ceremonies, the financial and legal heart of the city.
Starmer’s Labor Party has made an effort from the beginning – over several years in opposition – to present itself as a left-wing formation allied with workers but willing to work with businessmen.
Added to the uncertainty and nervousness that Brexit brought with it is a regulatory framework, when planning housing, infrastructure or energy installations, that favors local interests over national strategies. A construction plan, for example, for a wind power plant, may involve the delivery of up to 1,000 legal forms to the Administration. Each new project, meter by meter, faces a barrage of demands from what British slang long ago dubbed NIMBYs (acronym for Not In My BackyardNot in my backyard), citizens in favor of progress, as long as it does not alter their neighborhood or their landscape.
Starmer, whose first 100 days at the head of the Government (they ended last Saturday) have focused on putting out the fire caused by the scandal of free suits and football tickets and the irritation of the unions over social cuts, is desperately seeking the accolade of the business community to its promises of stability and growth.
So far, it’s off to a good start. The main officials of 14 financial mastodons – JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Blackstone and Bank of America, among others – have sent a joint letter to the newspaper The Timeshours before the start of the summit, in which they affirm that “a real opportunity has opened for the United Kingdom economy to grow, with the attraction of international investment.”
Labor rights and boycott
The promises of lighter and smarter, less bureaucratic regulation have come together over time with the start of parliamentary processing of the new Workers’ Rights Law, which aims to make unfair dismissals more difficult from the first day of the contract or extend financial aid for sick leave or maternity/paternity leave.
“I know that some of you are concerned about the labor regulations that we began to process last week,” Starmer told those attending the summit. “I want it to be clear, they will be rules that favor growth. Because workers with more job stability and better salaries contribute to a better economic growth model for this country,” he stated.
However, some sectors of the Labor Party further to the left have expressed their frustration, seeing how Starmer disfigured his Secretary of State for Transport, Louise Haigh, to try to save the image of this Monday’s summit.
In the presentation of the new labor rights, Haigh recalled the episode in 2019, when the ferry shipping company, P&O, part of the multinational DP World of the Government of Dubai, laid off 800 workers overnight. The Conservative Government of Boris Johnson then suggested a possible boycott of the company, which came to nothing, but the Labor minister, five years later, picked up the gauntlet, defined the shipping company as a “thug company” and also demanded a boycott of their activities.
No one had warned Haigh that DP World had compromised its attendance at the summit to announce more than €1 billion in investments. The company’s threat to back down was enough for Starmer to publicly disavow his minister. Not only was it the first time that Downing Street had left a minister in the lurch since Labor came to power. Starmer himself had once demanded that then Prime Minister Boris Johnson break all relations with the company until it reinstated its 800 employees, which he never did.
Starmer’s pragmatism, given the promise of nearly 60 billion in private investment in infrastructure, renewables or artificial intelligence projects, has led the prime minister to put that battle aside, to the disappointment of many of his allies.