The chair of the food retailer Iceland, Richard Walker, has given the Labour government only “six out of 10” for its record so far, after switching support to the party a year ago.
He told the Financial Times that Labour needed to do more to help firms investing now, rather than investing in projects that may take decades to be completed.
He criticised an increase to national insurance contributions (NICs) from April that he said had “added greatly to the cost of business”, and said the expansion of Heathrow and more building projects between Cambridge and Oxford would not benefit many firms in the medium term. “That third runway at Heathrow won’t be delivered in my lifetime,” he said.
Walker, son of Iceland’s founder, Malcolm Walker, quit the Conservative party and abandoned his ambitions to become an MP in October 2023 in protest at its “inability to deliver” and to support business under Rishi Sunak.
In January 2024, he switched his support to Keir Starmer before the July general election, saying Labour was the “right choice for everyone in business who wants to see this country grow and prosper”. He has not donated to the party, and is not a member.
The Labour government has endured a difficult start to its time in office. The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, faced a business backlash after announcing that employers would bear the brunt of tax rises through the increase to NICs. Labour had ruled out rises in income tax during the election campaign.
Walker said he wanted the government to reform the planning system to make building faster – including for Iceland’s planned new supermarkets – to show that Labour would be better for economic growth.
An overhaul of business rates, the taxes paid on properties, would also “enable us to get on with doing our jobs” of growing revenues and therefore creating new employment, he said.
“It’s just about inclusive growth and everyday growth,” he told the Guardian. He said the US Democratic party had learned the hard way that “it’s got to trickle down in everyday people’s lives”.
He also made the case for a positive message from the government, saying: “Confidence drives investment, investment drives jobs, and jobs drive growth.”
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Closer trading relations with the EU, as signalled by Starmer in recent weeks, would also be positive, Walker said. He was one of the few prominent business leaders who backed the leave campaign during the Brexit referendum in 2016, but he said his idea of the UK as part of a “global free trade market” was “maybe naive”. He told the FT: “I welcome any steps they can take to reduce friction at our borders.”
On his aborted attempt to become a Tory parliamentary candidate, Walker said: “I got some funny texts when it came out that I was turning my back on the Tories … David Cameron just sent me one word saying: ‘Really?’”
