The latest controversy to befall this government appears to have already blown over. The row was sparked by the Transport Secretary Louise Haigh’s admission that she has boycotted P&O Ferries since its mass firing of staff in 2022 (and her encouragement of others to join her). This apparently offended the ferry company’s owner, Dubai’s DP World, enough to threaten its own boycott of the government’s international investment summit in London, beginning on 14 October. Keir Starmer reacted in characteristically managerial fashion (“I think we’ll resolve that”) by rebuking Haigh and distancing the government from her comments. And DP World have put its toys back in the pram and will be attending the event after all. But, while perhaps a small victory for “grown-up” politics, the row has exposed a more structural fragility in the UK economy – and our loosely principled government’s desperate need to please overseas investors.
Louise Haigh, the MP for Sheffield Heeley, is from the moderate left of the Labour Party (she expressed regret for nominating Jeremy Corbyn for the party leadership in 2015 and has since been an enthusiastic supporter of the pragmatic Andy Burnham). Since July, she had shown herself to be one of the government’s rising stars, making a string of well-received policy announcements. Given that backdrop, Haigh’s ministerial candour last week is all the more surprising. And her boycott of P&O Ferries – in particular the revelation that she had instructed her department “to have absolutely no contact with P&O Ferries or DP World unless it is literally on safety grounds” – is admirably principled, even if it is the stuff of student politics.
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