Labour: for business or workers?

Blair: the Labour leader wooed the City on Tuesday

Apparently, the Euro is not the issue at this election. Europe, yes, and Tory plans to renegotiate key European treaties. But not the Euro.

Instead Tony Blair and Gordon Brown visited the city on Tuesday morning to reflect on Labour's relationship with the commercial sector.

Workers: can Labour rely on their support?

At the glossy offices of the business communication company, Bloomberg, they launched their business manifesto.

Mr Blair told his audience that after four years of government Labour has taken from the Conservative Party the "mantle of economic stability".

He offered ten reasons why the party's manifesto was good for business - ranging from the creation of economic stability to rewarding innovation, and from cutting regulation to increasing investment in science.

The prime minister emphasised that a re-elected Labour government would "take no risks" with its policies for economic stability, make the "business case" for investment in public services, and strengthen its relationship with the business community.

There was some discussion of what Gordon Brown called the "widening and deepening of the enterprise culture". What we ask of the private sector, he said, we ask of the public sector, too.

'The workers'

The government would tackle rigorously any barriers to productivity in the public sector - from matters of pay, to absenteeism, introducing new technology, to better industrial relations: all matters involving 'the workers'.

But there's a hard question for Labour: can it be both the party of business and the party of workers and consumers? And if forced to choose, which would it be?

John Monks: Labour's success is based on appealing to wider constituencies

Globalisation, presents new challenges to the relationship, and some on the left in Europe believe it's not enough - or just plain wrong - for Governments to do no more than turn their citizens into efficient economic units.

Among them, the French Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, said on Monday there lay in Europe, and particularly in the social chapter, a passionate defence of a socialist alternative.

M. Jospin insisted that Europe was more than "just another market" in the global economy, because it could undertake to improve the lot of workers.

He defended organised labour's role in the life of businesses and sought a legal basis for minimum levels of public social provision.

"A genuine body of European social law, establishing ambitious common standards, must be put in place and there must be a special focus on the provision of information to employees and their involvement in the life of the companies, as well as on layoffs, the struggle against job insecurity and wage policies," he said.

John Monks, the TUC general secretary, was broadly in favour of Lionel Jospin's views on harmonising workers' rights across Europe.

"It's not just business running riot in these countries, but businesses accepting standards," he said.

Mr Monks seems at ease with New Labour's current mantra "partnership":

"The days have long gone when it was labour versus capital on every count," he says.

And he recognises that their "broad appeal" wins elections. Publicly, at least before the election, he's not piling the pressure on Labour.

But Stephen Byers, Labour's Trade and Industry spokesman, is less impressed by the French, France, which has far greater levels of worker rights, was "a great success story".

He told the World at One that Labour had proved it was possible to strike a balance between a stable, growing economy while introducing worker benefits such as the minimum wage.

Disputing the idea that a pro-business government meant neglecting workers' interests, he said Labour would continue driving the social justice agenda.

Conflict in the workplace was in nobody's interest, he said, and far more could be achieved through a "real sense of partnership".