BAB members will have been pleased to see the meeting between PM Andy Burnham and President Trump at the UN General Assembly last week. The short press conference suggested that the two had got on well during their private meeting, with the President giving the PM some nice support lines – ‘the relationship is on the up’– and giving him cover in the Q&A from some of the more awkward questions. Whatever your politics, and these two couldn’t come from more different traditions, this relationship matters and the potential for blow ups was real; Ukraine, Gaza, The Falklands, Ireland, Chagos, energy policy, defence spend and tax are all areas where the two governments appear to have divergent views. Funnily, trade, which dominated the conversation for the last two years, seems one of the easier and less contentious issues!
So, congrats to the PM for navigating this first meeting! The focus of our members is now on the budget in the UK which is scheduled for October 28th and which will be the real sign of the direction of travel of the Burnham government. The last two budgets have raised and spent prodigious amounts of tax and debt and both these sources of financing feel they are at, or close to, the limit. And most of the additional burden has fallen either directly or indirectly on to business, employers and wealth creators. We believe that the government is sincere in its desire for economic growth, but the only way to make that happen is to focus on the fundamentals; this means a competitive tax and regulatory landscape, labour laws that don’t penalize risk taking, allowing entrepreneurs to keep a fair share of their profits and an operating environment that is as good or better than any of the local competitor countries.
And this includes energy prices, which a set of decisions by successive governments in the UK has made the highest, or amongst the highest, in the world. Unsurprisingly, these high prices have caused energy intensive industries to leave the UK or discount it when assessing investment destinations. BAB published our latest paper, A UK Energy Strategy to Lower Industrial Energy Costs and Strengthen Business Investment in the UK, to coincide with the first day of UN Climate Week. I was able to talk about the paper with the new Energy Secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh, when she was in NYC and we will continue to make the argument at every opportunity. Congrats to BAB Senior Policy Manager, Dan Hurley on the excellent paper and if you have comments or would like to get involved in this issue, let Dan or me know.
Energy is just one of the issues that we are working on and between now and December, Emanuel Adam and his team will be putting together our Policy Agenda for the coming year. If you have suggestions or ideas, please let Emanuel know.
In the US, much of the focus is on the midterm elections with the clear consensus amongst forecasters that the Democrats will handily win back the House of Representatives. As so often, the Senate looks much harder to predict, with at least 7 races too close to call at the moment. As we expected, affordability is at the top of the political agenda; while the US economy continues to bound along with impressive GDP growth, the inflation rate remains stubbornly high, and the cost of non-avoidable items like fuel and food has caused real pain. I can make no predictions, but we have had divided government for exactly 50 of the last 100 years in the USA and it is probably not a bad thing for business…to paraphrase Eugene McCarthy, the only thing worse than a government that can’t do things, is one that can!
The BAB autumn convening program is in full swing in New York, London and Washington. Sir Richard Branson dropped in at our Accelerate event at Virgin Hotels New York City and took questions and chatted with members. Upcoming events include our first Women in Leadership roundtable in NYC, major Economic Outlook events in Washington, New York and London, Exec Round Tables with David Miliband and Carl Hess and our usual mix of networking and thought leadership events. You can see the full program here.
Tables and tickets for the New York Holiday Lunch are available now too so make sure you don’t miss out. You can confirm your place with Julia Greenberg.
Finally, mark your calendars for our annual BAB Policy Conference in London on Feb 2nd where the consequences from the UK budget and US elections will be amongst the issues that we will discuss with leading business and political figures.
It is going to be a full few months and I look forward to seeing you along the way.