The government will on Monday welcome more than £50bn of investment in the British economy as Sir Keir Starmer tries to reset his administration after a first hundred days marked by scandal and infighting.
Sky News has learnt that the International Investment Summit in the City of London will comprise more than £50bn of deal announcements – or roughly twice the £28bn unveiled at the previous comparable gathering held under the former Conservative administration.
The total figure to be announced on Monday was still being finalised this weekend amid continuing negotiations with companies.
Sources said, however, that the final amount would “certainly” be in excess of £50bn.
The summit will be attended by executives from globally important companies such as Alphabet, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and Deepmind.
In recent days, a row emerged involving DP World, which had been planning to announce a £1bn investment in the London Gateway port.
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The company threatened to cancel its attendance at the conference and review the investment in the wake of comments by the transport secretary, Louise Haigh, labelling its P&O Ferries subsidiary “a rogue operator”.
After Downing Street officials intervened, the dispute appeared to have been resolved this weekend, with the investment proceeding.
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Sky News can also reveal that the summit will include a behind-closed-doors session chaired by the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, and a number of chief executives.
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Image: Jonathan Reynolds is to meet with business leaders behind closed doors. File pic: Reuters
The group will, according to insiders, jointly scrutinise a green paper on industrial strategy that will also be published on Monday.
One invitee said they had been “asked to mark the government’s homework”.
A source close to Mr Reynolds said: “When the business secretary said this government would work in partnership with business, he meant it.
“We respect the expertise of business leaders and want their voice at the heart of policymaking.
“That’s why we’re getting them around the table before the strategy is published, so it works for the industries it’s designed to benefit.”
On Friday, Sky News revealed that Sir Keir would use his speech at the investment summit to say that his administration will scrutinise watchdogs across a range of industries to ensure that they are not acting as barriers to growth.
Sir Keir is said by officials to be determined to deliver the message that regulators such as Ofwat, Ofgem, the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Competition and Markets Authority should be focused on the competitiveness of the UK economy.
The event is being seen as a test of Labour’s economic agenda in the eyes of investors which wield influence over the destination of trillions of pounds of investment funding.
His speech will come, however, against the backdrop of a financial crisis at Thames Water, Britain’s biggest water utility, which is backed by sovereign wealth funds and pension funds from countries including Abu Dhabi, Canada and China.
Reports in recent weeks have suggested that global investors have become so alarmed by Ofwat’s approach to the Thames Water crisis that they are reluctant to commit further sums to British infrastructure projects.
On Thursday, the government appointed Poppy Gustafsson, the former boss of cybersecurity company Darktrace, as investment minister, ensuring that the government avoided the ignominy of staging Monday’s summit without a minister for investment being in place.
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Zack Polanski and Nigel Farage might be polar opposites when it comes to politics – but they do have one thing in common.
The pair are both cutting through in a changing media landscape when attention is scarce and trust in mainstream politics is scarcer still.
For Farage, the Reform UK leader, momentum has been building since he won a seat at the general election last year and he continues to top the polls.
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2:47
Badenoch doesn’t want to talk about Farage
But in the six weeks since Polanski became leader of the Greens, membership has doubled, they’ve polled higher than ever before while three Labour councillors have defected. Has the insurgent firebrand finally met his match?
“I’m sure I don’t need to say this, but I despise Nigel Farage’s politics and disagree with him on almost everything,” Polanski tells Sky News.
“But I think his storytelling has undoubtedly cut through and so yes there has been a huge part of us saying ‘If Farage can do that with a politics of hate and division, then it’s time for the Green Party to do that with a politics of hope and community’ and that’s absolutely what I intend to keep doing.”
Polanski was speaking after a news conference to announce the defections of the councillors in Swindon – a bellwether area that is currently led by a Labour council and has two Labour MPs, but was previously controlled by the Tories.
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It is the sort of story the party would previously have announced in a press release, but the self-described “eco populist” is determined to do things differently to grab attention.
He has done media interviews daily over the past few weeks, launched his own podcast and turbocharged the Greens social media content – producing slick viral videos such as his visit to Handsworth (the Birmingham neighbourhood where Robert Jenrick claimed he saw no white people).
Image: Zack Polanski announces the defection of Labour councillors
Polanski insists that it is not increased exposure in and of itself that is attracting people to his party but his messaging – he wants to “make hope normal again”.
“I’m not going to be in a wetsuit or be parachuting from a helicopter”, he says in a swipe at Lib Dem leader Ed Davey.
“I think you only need to do stunts if you don’t have something really clear to say and then you need to grab attention.
“I think when you look at the challenges facing this country right now if you talk about taxing wealth and not work, if you talk about the mass inequality in our society and you talk about your solidarity with people living in poverty, with working-class communities, I think these are the things that people both want to hear, but also they want to know our solutions. The good news is I’ve got loads of solutions and the party has loads of solutions. “
Some of those solutions have come under criticism – Reform UK have attacked his policy to legalise drugs and abolish private landlords.
Image: Discontent is fuelling the rise of challenger parties. Pic: PA
Polanski is confident he can win the fight. He says it helps that he talks “quite quickly because it means that I’m able to be bold but also have nuance”. And he is a London Assembly member not an MP, so he has time to be the party’s cheerleader rather than being bogged down with case work.
As for what’s next, the 42-year-old has alluded to conversations with Labour MPs about defections. He has not revealed who they are but today gave an idea of who he would welcome – naming Starmer critic Richard Burgon.
Like Burgon, Polanski believes Starmer “will be gone by May” and that the local elections for Labour “will be disastrous”.
He wants to replace Labour “right across England and Wales” when voters go to the polls, something Reform UK has also vowed to do.
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2:26
Is Zack Polanski squeezing the Labour vote?
Could the Greens be kingmakers?
Luke Tryl, director of More in Common, says this reflects a “new axis of competition” as frontline British politics shifts from a battle of left vs right to a battle of process vs anti-establishment.
Farage has been the beneficiary of this battle so far but Tryl says Polanski is “coming up in focus groups” in a way his predecessors didn’t. “He is cutting through”, the pollster says.
However, one big challenge Polanski faces is whether his rise will cause the left vote to fragment and make it easier for Farage to win – something he has said he wants to avoid at all costs.
And yet, asked if he would form a coalition with Labour to keep Farage out of power in the event of a hung parliament, he suggested he would only do so if Sir Keir Starmer is no longer prime minister.
“I have issues with Keir Starmer as prime minister,” he says. “I think he had the trust of the public, but I would say that’s been broken over and over again. If we had a different Labour prime minister that would be a different conversation about where their values are.
He adds: “I do think stopping Nigel Farage has to be a huge mission for any progressive in this country, but the biggest way we can stop Nigel Farage is by people joining the Green Party right now; creating a real alternative to this Labour government, where we say we don’t have to compromise on our values.
“If people wanted to vote for Nigel Farage, they’d vote for Nigel Farage. What does Keir Starmer think he’s doing by offering politics that are similar but watered down? That’s not going to appeal to anyone, and I think that’s why they’re sinking in the polls.”
The STREAMLINE Act would update anti–money laundering rules by lifting decades-old thresholds for transaction reporting, cutting red tape for banks and crypto companies.