Looking ahead: Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer
The Mail on Sunday reported last week that Sir Keir Starmer had taken on spin doctors from the well-connected PR firm Brunswick to help the Labour Party shore up its links with businesses.
It seems the news has set off a scramble among the City’s top companies to cosy up to the agency in anticipation that they will have the ear of a future Prime Minister.
A source close to Brunswick said the organisation had received a significant flurry of inquiries from top FTSE firms, many of which are looking to work with its PR teams and to take advantage of the group’s close links with the party.
Labour’s teaming up with Brunswick comes ahead of next year’s much-anticipated General Election, which – according to all of the current opinion polls – will almost certainly herald a landslide victory for the party.
This would mean the end of 14 years of Conservative rule.
It always pays to have friends in high places.
Poles apart
One of the headline announcements from last week’s Autumn Statement was the ‘biggest business tax cut in modern British history’, in the Chancellor’s words.
The UK now stacks up well compared with other OECD nations.
But spare a thought for the Latin American country of Colombia, which was replaced by somewhere seemingly called ‘Columbia’ in a comparison table in the official Treasury document.
Investec’s crystal ball on the fritz
Investment manager Investec was left red-faced last week following a major snafu with its debt forecasts.
The firm predicted in a publication on November 16 that the Treasury borrowed £22billion in October, which would have been a whopping £11.5billion more than last year.
But last Monday, it emailed a correction note saying its forecast had been cut to £11.5billion, partially blaming the previous figure on a ‘coding error’ and issuing an apology to its mailing list clients for ‘any confusion’ caused.
Regardless of Investec’s final forecast, it still managed to undershoot the official number from the Office for National Statistics, which was published a day later.
Their crystal ball must be on the fritz.
Beeswax spend for Department for Net Zero
Last week, the Government quietly published a batch of spending data from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
These monthly breakdowns usually include spending on things that wouldn’t seem out of place for a central department, such as costs for computer software and hotel stays for travelling civil servants.
But the data for June showed the department had splashed out £815 on products from Queen Bee Wraps, an East Lothian maker of beeswax cloth wrappings.
Given the ongoing crises facing the Government, maybe these were used to help wipe the sweat from Ministers’ brows.
Contributor: Francesca Washtell
