Kemi Badenoch yesterday declared that ‘capitalism is not a dirty word’, as she vowed to rebuild Tory relations with business.
In her first major speech as Conservative Party leader, Mrs Badenoch told the CBI conference that the government needed to slash the bureaucratic hurdles to growth and ‘get out of the way’ of business.
She acknowledged that the last government, in which she served as business secretary, had ‘lost the confidence of business’.
And she put defence of the free market at the heart of her agenda for the party, saying the advent of a Labour government focused on the public sector made it more important than ever.
‘Someone once told me that capitalism is old fashioned,’ she said.
‘I don’t think so. I think it is important that we explain what capitalism in a free market environment means.
‘Capitalism is not a dirty word, wealth is not a dirty word, profit is not a dirty word. But we need to start explaining how these things deliver for people out there, people who often think that you are in it for yourselves and that we the politicians are in cahoots.’
Mrs Badenoch criticised Labour for hitting business with a £25 billion increase in employers’ National Insurance, describing it as a ‘jobs tax’. But she said she wanted to take time before setting out her own economic strategy.
The Tory leader also renewed her call for a rewiring of the British state – and an end to the belief that the solution to problems was always more government regulation.
‘The way to fix things is not just about creating new laws,’ she said.
She added: ‘I have seen the system from the inside and it is broken. We are trying to fix problems with the wrong tools.
‘We are using a mindset that worked well in the late 20th century, but does not work well when we have aggressive competitor economies like China and when, there is rapid technological innovation. When our society is getting older and the birth rate is still too low.
‘More quangos, more interference, more regulation, more laws will not fix that.’