The Conservatives are making a mistake with their ‘tough on business’ stance

Many at the Conservative Party conference are riding the anti-business wave by declaring that companies need to stop relying on cheap migrant labour, writes Salma Shah

Boris Johnson at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester this week (PA)

Nothing captures the imagination quite as arrestingly as the excesses and perceived deceptions of “fat cat” business leaders. Faceless corporations are often depicted as greedy, self-interested profiteers with a lack of compassion for customers, and all in need of tougher regulation.

It’s not hard to see why we have such a dismal view of private enterprise. This week we find ourselves shaking our heads at the news of Philip and Tina Green’s lavish property purchases that were seemingly assisted by an offshore company, allowing the transactions to be a little more “tax efficient”. Although the manner of the acquisition may be perfectly legal, does it pass the “smell test”? Probably not, given that BHS, a company that gave the Greens half a billion pounds over the years, was at the time on the precipice, leaving 11,000 people potentially unemployed and facing the loss of their pensions.

Facebook is also batting off questions about the nature of its business. The whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed details this week about the company’s need to keep people scrolling in order to ensure advertisers can continually reach them, prompting excoriating reviews from the Congressional committee taking the evidence. There were details about how Instagram makes teenagers feel bad about their bodies and how tackling misinformation on the platform had become less of a priority after the presidential elections.