From repair to revival: Sir Keir makes his pitch to business

Our Senior Partner Ryan Crighton was in Westminster yesterday to hear Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer address UK business leaders at the British Chambers of Commerce Global Annual Conference. Here's his dispatch from the capital as the Labour leader sought to answer the conference's key question: Where is the growth?

There’s a certain theatrical choreography to prime ministerial speeches at business conferences: a grateful nod to the host, a roll-call of achievements, a moment of humility (if you’re lucky), and then a resounding chorus of “we’ve got your back.”

Sir Keir Starmer’s address to the British Chambers of Commerce yesterday ticked all those boxes, and then some. But this wasn’t just another hand-on-heart moment with Britain’s business community. This was a curtain-raiser for Starmerism 2.0 – the transition from repair to revival.

Delivered with the weight of government behind him – and more than a few references to “the mess we inherited” – Starmer’s core message was simple: Britain is open, Britain is stable, and crucially, Britain is worth investing in again.

It was a speech laced with optimism, not something we’re overly used to in Westminster these days. “Take another look at Britain,” he urged, recounting a recent conversation with Nvidia’s CEO, who described the UK as in a “Goldilocks situation” for AI. Starmer, ever the careful lawyer, doesn’t tend to wax lyrical. So when he says he’s “fighting for you” – “you” being the roomful of business leaders – he wants them to believe it’s not just PR spin.

Still, some lines had the unmistakable whiff of political theatre. The “hat-trick” of trade deals – with the US, EU and India – was repeated like a striker showing off golden boots. A little self-deprecating football anecdote followed (“the last time I got a hat-trick was against my kids”), but make no mistake, this was a brag.

The sheer breadth of the speech was telling. Infrastructure, defence, planning reform, trade, energy bills, whisky exports – if you were a British business with a problem, Starmer claimed to have a solution. He spoke of slashed energy bills for 7,000 firms, reformed planning rules to get spades in the ground, and devolution to “strip out regulation that blocks investment.”

One sector was notably absent: oil and gas. In a speech that touched on nearly every industrial lever, the omission of any reference to the UK’s still-crucial energy producers – especially those in the North Sea – felt more than a little conspicuous. For a Prime Minister so eager to talk about “partnership,” it was a missed opportunity.

And then, there was the tone: partnership, stability, seriousness. He returned again and again to the idea that government and enterprise are now pulling in the same direction. “It’s not just dialogue, it’s a partnership,” he said – the kind of language that lands well in corporate boardrooms.

There were few fireworks – but that, of course, is the point. Starmer’s appeal to business is not based on charisma, but on predictability. After years of turbulence, he’s offering a technocratic balm. Competence, not chaos.

Yet the speech was also a calculated political counterpoint. Though stripped of overt party politics (in this version, at least), the subtext wasn’t subtle: Starmer wants to be seen as the Prime Minister who made Britain investable again. The man who got deals over the line where others floundered. The leader who turned an uncertain UK into a “global champion for free trade.”

Cynics might argue that much of the investment he celebrated was in motion before Labour took office. Others will question whether the UK’s patchy productivity and sclerotic planning system can really be overcome with a few nicely worded strategy documents. But yesterday, the PM wasn’t interested in caveats.

Instead, he painted a picture of a Britain that had steadied its footing and was starting to climb – shovels in hand, trade deals in pocket, AI startups at the ready.

“Britain is back in business,” he declared. If that’s the slogan for the next four years, this speech was the first big pitch to his investors. And judging by the applause in the room, at least some of the shareholders were buying in.