CorpComms Magazine

This year's party conference season threatens to be the most sensational for two decades. Tony Blair faces a party revolt on a scale and level of brutality that he has never confronted before. He is fighting for his very survival.

While this season may well feature Blair's last conference as leader, it will also include David Cameron and Menzies Campbell's first. They both need to shine if they are to halt the mutterings against their leadership.

Beneath the headlines, however, there will be another unreported conference going on. The UK's largest corporations and industry groups will be present. They will host parties, have stalls in the exhibition stands, and host discreet lunches and dinners away from the conference floor.

Business people are not just observers at such conferences. They are a powerful force. At the Labour Party conference they are less vocal than the trade unions, but quietly more influential.

For big business, a conference is a place to see and be seen by the politicians that matter. MPs are readily accessible as they wander around the conference floor. So are ministers, who are crucially no longer protected by the phalanx of civil servants that typically surrounds them in Whitehall. It is an ideal time for businesses to reach understandings, thrash out deals and drive home benefits in terms of local employment, national interest and, often the most important factor of all, the success of their pet schemes.

All back to Tony's

On the Tuesday of the Labour conference, corporate chairmen and chief executives will be flown to Manchester, courtesy of the party, to attend Tony Blair's speech. In the evening many will linger for the lavish fundraiser dinner, where senior business people will get the chance to voice their concerns directly to the prime minister, the chancellor and other cabinet ministers. Big business knows that by flaunting its presence at party conferences and spending large sums of money, it will get an extremely sympathetic hearing.

The annual conference is a massive money-spinner for the Labour Party. This year more than ever, with party finances at rock bottom, it matters very much that Labour makes a giant profit. The conference organisers will make certain that big donors get treated well. In practice, that means assuring them the access they need.

Fifty years ago, the Tory and Labour parties had over 1 mn members each. Today Labour has fewer than 200,000 supporters on the party rolls, and the Conservatives not much more than that. This means that UK political parties cannot pay for their campaigning machines largely out of membership dues as they did even in the fairly recent past. They have solved this problem, in part at least, by entering into an agreement with big business. Political parties, particularly those in power, possess one thing that no businessman, however successful, can obtain without help - they control the machinery of state. Today's political parties are ready to make that access available to private business, at a price. They are obliged to sustain themselves by exchanging policy, access and patronage for cash in the party coffers.

Some of these cases have become public. New Labour's reversal of its stance on tobacco advertising for Formula One came shortly after it received a £1 mn cheque from racing boss Bernie Ecclestone. Tony Blair later intervened on behalf of the international conglomerate Mittal when it sought to purchase a Romanian steel company. Mittal's most meaningful connection with the UK at that stage was the £125,000 it had given to the Labour Party; it has since deepened that relationship by giving a further £2 mn.

Under cover

Mainly, however, the relationship between business and politics is covert. Property developers need planning consents, supermarkets want out-of-town sites, consultancy firms are on the lookout for government contracts and airlines want slots at the big hub airports. It is always useful for these business people to be at annual party conferences. Even if the deals themselves do not get struck at Blackpool, Manchester or Brighton, it is vital to be present.

'Labour always presses us into taking a conference stall,' says one corporate lobbyist who has been well rewarded by Labour. 'So we go. They charge a huge fee for the stalls, so this is our way of funding the party without appearing to do so.'

The vast corporate presence at party conferences has led to a fundamental change in the nature of UK democracy. Look back 50 years, and all political parties were answerable - though sometimes reluctantly - to their members. This is no longer the case. Labour in particular has gone to extreme lengths to take power away from party activists. It has emasculated the National Executive Committee, formerly the ruling body of the party, and taken control of the conference agenda away from ordinary members. Much of the power these activists used to exercise is now to some extent vested in big business, which has been given access to party policy-making.

Some of this influence is illegal, and almost all of it unethical, which is why some of the most flagrant lobbying at party conferences has been toned down in recent years. British Airways and other big companies used to hold huge conference parties, invitations for which were eagerly sought.

Nowadays, particularly after the big sleaze scandals of recent years, business knows that it is best to play down its presence. The hubris of the early Labour period, when the Somerfield supermarket chain infuriated some Labour delegates by providing the branded cord that held the conference pass, has gone. Clever companies no longer hold events themselves. They gain profile and access by sponsoring lectures held by the Institute of Public Policy Research, the New Statesman party and other high-profile events.

Strange bedfellows

The massive business presence at the Labour Party conference tells us something very instructive. Business people do not seek general policies favouring the economy as a whole, such as low taxation and less regulation. They are after particular favours that benefit their own business, and sometimes this is at the expense of the public good. That is why they so desperately seek access to the party in power even if - like Labour - it generally promotes higher taxes and denser regulation.

The plight of Conservative Party conferences is a further demonstration of this naked self-interest. The Tory ethic has always been more sympathetic than that of Labour to the business community at large, but this was of no interest to individual business people. These men and women wanted special favours, and these could only come from the government of the day. So for the last ten years or so Tory conferences have been slightly tragic events, spurned for the most part by the most powerful business figures (although, admittedly, the Tories did not help their cause by holding so many of their annual get-togethers in Blackpool). The full measure of this desperation is that throughout most of this period the most popular event at the conference was hosted by the Tobacco Manufacturers' Association, a worthy but nevertheless obscure organisation that surely cannot claim to reflect fully the spirit of the times.

This year, things may be different. David Cameron has given a new plausibility to the Conservative Party. For the first time in more than a decade it looks as if the Conservatives may win the next election. The Conservative policy-making process is in full swing, so this is the ideal moment for lobbyists to try and influence or shape the next party manifesto. For all these reasons we should expect a more powerful and interested business presence at this year's Tory conference. But the UK's corporate elite will not be there because it favours the low-taxation, free market sympathies of the Conservative party. It will be out in force in a quest for special favours when, and if, David Cameron attains power.

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