Key advice from Industry Forum
Behind Labour’s overt wooing of business lies a group of 250 top industrialists and business leaders.
The Industry Forum is a central pillar of New Labour’s bid to win over the UK business vote. Established by Robin Cook MP after the last general election, the forum’s simple mission statement was to be ‘an exercise in open Opposition, to invite the input of those who know the needs of industry best because they work in it’.
Membership, including representatives from KPMG, 3i, NatWest and the British Venture Capital Association, has doubled over the past year and the forum has actively developed and shaped policies in two key Labour documents – Vision for Growth and Growing and Prospering.
If Labour wins on 1 May, the Industry Forum is destined to adopt a central strategy position.
Its chairman, Gerald Frankel, describes the membership as cross-party politically, but ‘businessmen are really politically neutral, with their business interests at heart’. He has no doubt Labour will stick to its five pledges for business (see table opposite). ‘The idea that Labour is bad for business and the Conservatives and business go together is a political ploy.’
