Blighty newsletter: Three takeaways from an interview with Sir Keir Starmer

PMI spoke to Sir Keir Starmer, Britain’s prime minister, yesterday on the sidelines of his international investment summit. King Charles III made an appearance at the event, as did Sir Elton John, Gareth Southgate (a former England manager) and Eric Schmidt (formerly of Google). For all its woes, the British state can still put on a show. But what of the pitch Sir Keir is making to investors? The interview is . I have three takeaways.First, this is a story of a country that is having to fix the fundamentals. Reasons to do business in Britain that once would have been taken for granted now, after years of political chaos, need to be advertised. Labour’s big mandate meant that it could make policies that would be “measured in years, not months”, Sir Keir told me. Britain, he said in his speech, would be “a stable, trusted, rule-abiding partner”; no more “needlessly insulting our closest allies” or dispensing “a few choice Anglo-Saxon phrases ”. One of his big reforms is also simple: creating a one-stop shop for investors wishing to engage with Whitehall rather than navigate a labyrinth of departments. This is remarkably basic stuff, and yet also badly needed. Adam Posen, an economist, last year wrote that Britain needed to think like an emerging market; yesterday had the vibe of a country seeking to catch investors’ attention for the first time by advertising its stable politics and commitment to the rule of law rather than that of a historically open economy.Second, the rhetoric suggests that Sir Keir has locked himself into a reform of the that is more radical than wonks had dared to hope before the election. “Talk to any investor, anyone involved in infrastructure, and they will tell you—or housing for that matter—it takes far too long,” he said. “It’s far too complicated. It holds projects up, not for months, but for years. They don’t have to invest in this country. They have choices.”He raised a government policy paper from last month that proposed near-automatic permission for the densification of suburban areas if plans met certain criteria: “We need to get to a position where there’s a default position of ‘yes’ and we can move forward at pace.” He wants investors who had big projects mothballed under the last government to dust them off. It seems reminiscent of the ’s approach to remaking the Labour Party in opposition: unflashy, rather programmatic, but once in his sights, pursued with a singular focus.Third, , Labour’s policy pitch amounts to a grand quid pro quo with investors. In exchange for stability and a burst of supply-side reform, they are being asked to swallow some sour medicine. The government’s employment-rights bill is strikingly broad, creating new individual and collective rights for workers and unions. And the budget on October 30th, it is increasingly apparent, will see the tax burden on employers and investors go up.This is a difficult balancing act to pull off. Sir Keir’s pitch yesterday was to ask investors to see his push for growth and his workplace reforms in a wider context: quelling the populist tide that threatens the open and stable democracies on which they depend. “This is an economic argument for the better of the country to make people better off, but it is also a fight for the values of freedom and democracy that we fundamentally believe,” he said.