Labour has dropped a flagship announcement on business from a conference speech, after companies, including Blackstone, pulled out following interventions by senior Conservatives.
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves had planned to use her conference speech to announce the creation of a British infrastructure council, as part of a bid to make Labour the party of business. The council was expected to be formed of five leading companies: Aviva, Lloyds, Fidelity, Phoenix and Blackstone.
But the businesses involved pulled out after senior Tories became aware of the plans and contacted the companies involved, stating the timing was “too political”.
Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, called one of the businesses directly.
“We didn’t want it to look like we were supporting Labour,” a source at one of the companies said. “We wanted this to be non-partisan.”
