Yvette Cooper, one of Labour’s clutch of leadership hopefuls, believes that the party must be more pro business. The only circumstances in which people vote Labour for business is if the Tories have messed up. Because Labour’s core vote is not among business, it is among the mass of working people at all levels whose jobs are critical to the functioning of an organised society, but where their pay is limited by the nature of the job and wealth will never be the outcome. Teachers, train drivers, power workers, bin men, motorway engineers, airline pilots and countless more make up the mass of the voting population. That is where the Labour party is rooted and those roots go right down to the disadvantaged and the vulnerable. They have stopped voting Labour and in millions of cases they have stopped voting. It is with that vast multitude that Labour has to reconnect. Of course some business people and even business leaders will come aboard, but that is a bonus. It is not where Labour’s future lies.
The Bankers, estate agents, City lawyers and accountants, the billionaires, the entrepreneurs, old money and all the fingers in the capital pie will for the most part always vote Tory. There are too few of them to share between two parties and if Labour seeks to cosy up and become a pinkish Tory party with a more exciting goody bag it will never see power again. If it can inspire the working population and rally it to the Labour cause and define that cause clearly so that turnout rises to nudge the eighties, it will enjoy a landslide in England as big as that of the SNP in Scotland. So Yvette Cooper has a choice. She must reconnect to Labour’s roots and stop speaking like a Tory. Or she can become one.