More than 100 business leaders have given their support to Britain’s opposition Labour Party before a July 4 election, saying the kingdom needs to end the instability and stagnation that has dogged the economy.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s governing Conservatives have typically been the party of big business, but Labour’s finance policy chief, Rachel Reeves, has spent years courting business owners in a bid to show her party can be trusted to run the economy.
The letter, signed by current and former chief executives in retail, advertising, travel and finance, said that Labour had shown it had changed and should be given a chance to shape the UK’s future.
Photo: AP
“We, as leaders and investors in British business, believe that it is time for a change,” the letter said.
“We are in urgent need of a new outlook to break free from the stagnation of the last decade and we hope by taking this public stand we might persuade others of that need, too,” it said.
Labour will hope the endorsement shows that it is no longer the party of Keir Starmer’s predecessor, veteran left-wing lawmaker Jeremy Corbyn, who campaigned at the last election in 2019 to renationalize some key assets and hike taxes on the rich.
Leaders who signed the letter include the boss of retailer Iceland, the chairman of JD Sports, the head of the UK arm of ad giant WPP, the former CEO of Aston Martin and the founder of a children’s company that once included Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, as an investor.
Starmer’s Labour have held an about 20-point lead in polls for almost a year. It has accused the government of 14 years of economic mismanagement, failing to give business the stability it craves and leaving people worse off.
Britain’s economic performance since the COVID-19 pandemic has been the weakest among the G7 economies with the exception of Germany, weighed down by high levels of debt and stuck in a rut of slow growth.
Reeves was to say later yesterday that the endorsement shows that Labour can bring business investment back to Britain.
“Our plans for growth are built on partnership with business,” she was to say.
Sunak’s Conservative Party says it has had to steer the economy through the twin shocks of COVID-19 and the energy spike that followed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
A recent drop in inflation shows that the economy is back on track, it said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home