Rishi Sunak wants businesses to know he ‘has their back’ – but is it enough?

The prime minister’s Business Connect event comes as post-Brexit concerns are front and centre for companies. He must do more to prove he is pro-business, believes James Moore

We’re unnashamedly pro-business, said Sunak at the event in London on Monday (PA)

When it comes to business, the government has replaced the F word with a C word: Connect!

“We’re ashamedly pro-business,” prime minister Rishi Sunak declared to a gathering of industry leaders as he launched new initiative Business Connect. Some may see that as a bit rich coming from a man dealing with what I see as the most anti-business policy this nation has ever had foisted upon it.

That would be Brexit. Of course, the ruinously hard version of it was Boris Johnson’s gift to the nation. Sunak, Johnson’s former chancellor, has meanwhile managed to smooth the roughest of its edges – the Nothern Ireland protocol – with his Windsor Framework. It sailed through the House of Commons and eased the very real fears of a potentially ruinous trade war with Britain’s biggest trading partner.