Keir Starmer insists Labour is ‘pro-business’ and forces frontbencher Alex Sobel to apologise for saying it is ‘the enemy’ as the Opposition Leader kicks off by-election campaign in Hartlepool
- Starmer revealed he has asked shadow tourism minister Alex Sobel to apologise
- Leeds North West MP spoke to a climate change podcast earlier this month
- He told Climactic the private sector was ‘the enemy’ to socialists like him
Keir Starmer insisted that Labour was ‘pro-business’ under his leadership as he rebuked one of his frontbenchers for calling the private sector ‘the enemy’.
The Opposition Leader revealed he has asked shadow tourism minister Alex Sobel to apologise for remarks made to a climate change podcast.
The Leeds North West MP has claimed that he had initially refused to meet business leaders when he started out in Parliament, but has been forced to relent to get their help with environmental campaigns.
Speaking to the Climactic podcast earlier this month Mr Sobel said that ignoring big business remained ‘my dream’ but had been put to one side out of practicality.
The comments will come as a severe blow to Sir Keir, who is attempting to rebuild Labour’s economic credentials after the disastrous leadership of left-winger Jeremy Corbyn.
The Labour leader, who was campaigning in Hartlepool today ahead of a parliamentary by-election in the former Labour constituency, told reporters: ‘Under my leadership, I’ve been very, very clear that the Labour Party is pro-business.
‘We’re more than pro-business, we want a partnership with business.’
He added: ‘Alex Sobel knows what he said was wrong. He has apologised.
The Opposition Leader revealed he has asked shadow tourism minister Alex Sobel to apologise for remarks made to a climate change podcast.
The Leeds North West MP has claimed that he had initially refused to meet business leaders when he started out in Parliament, but has been forced to relent to get their help with environmental campaigns.
‘He’s apologised to me. The Labour Party, under my leadership, is very clearly pro-business. We want a partnership with business. And Alex Sobel understands that.’
Speaking to the podcast run by Simon Moore, Mr Sobel said he had ‘engaged’ with firms to ‘push’ them into action on climate change.
He said: ‘The amount of corporates I am talking to … when I first became an MP, I was like, I am not taking meetings with any of these people. These people are the enemy, you know?
‘I’m a socialist, my job is to effectively transform society so that we have a much more mixed economy and we don’t have huge global corporations which have all this power.
‘Now I take the meetings because we haven’t got enough time. That is still my dream, but we haven’t got time to do that and save the climate.
‘So we need to get them to make the transformation now and then also do the political action for everything else at the same time alongside it.’