What was unimaginable in the days of Jeremy Corbyn has become routine under Sir Keir Starmer. The rapprochement between Labour and capitalism was on lavish display last Thursday when a throng of business bosses crowded into an executive suite at the Oval cricket ground in south London for an audience with the Labour leader and Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor. Both told some 400 senior corporate leaders that Labour is now “the party of business”. The mantra was repeated by Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow business secretary, and Tulip Siddiq, the shadow City minister.

Organisers gleefully reported that every £1,000-a-head ticket for this all-day “Labour business conference” had been snapped up within four hours of being offered. Among the attendees were representatives from AstraZeneca, Barclays, HSBC, Goldman Sachs, Google, Legal & General and Shell. No one said, as Ed Miliband once did as Labour leader, that elements of business act like “predators”. The event was the most explicit demonstration yet of Labour’s concerted effort to get close to business and to be seen to be close.

There’s clearly an audience among companies and investors for the message that they would be better off with Labour after the havoc inflicted by Brexit, the “fuck business” posture of Boris Johnson, the financial chaos unleashed by Liz Truss and Kamikaze Kwarteng, and Rishi Sunak’s screeching U-turns over net zero and high-speed rail. One senior Tory involved in his party’s effort to rebuild broken bridges with business reports that whenever he visits the chief executive of a FTSE 100 company he finds that “Rachel Reeves has got there before me”.

This romance invites the question: who is seducing whom? Is business falling head over heels for the steely charms of Ms Reeves and Sir Keir’s chat-up lines about desiring “a partnership”? Or has Labour’s leadership gone weak-kneed by gazing at the corporates through rose-tinted spectacles? Some of the attendees at Labour business events are genuine long-term supporters. There are also a few converts from across the aisle. Shortly before the schmoozefest at the Oval, Labour was delighted by an endorsement from........

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