Boris Johnson is biting the business hand that has always fed him

The folks I know in business and in the City of London are all shaking their heads in anger and frustration. Not one has anything good to say about Britain's current government. They’re perplexed that a Conservative administration should display such little disregard for them.

Take the Budget. There is virtually nothing in it for the private sector, no major measure for them to get excited about. There is a discount on business rates for pubs, restaurants and shops, but it lasts only a year, and a promise again that this much-reviled tax will be overhauled. Instead, the main headlines are about pay rises for public sector workers, an increase in the minimum wage, help for low earners and reform of alcohol duties.

Last week, at the UK’s Global Investment Summit, Prime Minister Boris Johnson put on a typical bravura performance, full of quips and devoid of meaningful detail. Arranged in front of him were some of the world’s most powerful corporate leaders, including several bank chiefs. They could forgive him, because “that’s Boris”, but nevertheless they were left scratching their heads at the lack of substance.

At the recent Tory conference, it was the fault of business that the UK was suffering from embarrassing shortages of labour and produce. For too long, the narrative went, greedy business types had been making giant profits from paying their workers so little. Therefore, it was not surprising that they could not find the staff. But the post-Brexit economy is to become high skills, high wages. Just like that.

Normally, ahead of such a shift in direction, various members of the business great and good would be brought in, sat down and asked what they thought. Not this time. The captains of industry were completely blind-sided.

They don’t forget either, that when he was foreign secretary, Johnson used an extremely rude expletive to sum up his attitude towards business. Clearly, judging by his behaviour since, they say, the four-letter word was meant.

I was at a meeting a few weeks ago in which a businessperson complained: “You would think that Boris Johnson would treat us better. After all, he went to Eton and Oxford, and all his friends are in business.”

The speaker’s face was serious. And this goes to the heart of the problem.

The City and business like to suppose that Johnson is one of them. He may not have held down a commercial career before heading into politics, unlike Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid, both former bankers. And his surname is not associated with a family-owned company, unlike his former party colleague George Osborne. But he grew up surrounded by people who went into law, banking, accounting, stockbroking or insurance, or set up businesses themselves.

He leads a party, too, that has always declared itself to be the “friend of business”. It is their natural constituency. The Tories rely on private donations, mostly from those who made fortunes in commerce. Johnson’s triumphant Brexit campaign was paid for by super-rich hedge fund operators. Yet, this is how he repays them.

The hedge fund argument does not completely wash, since the donors were anxious not to have their industry regulated by the EU. They were not acting out of a wish to benefit their UK business chums and peers.

Even so, there is a strong feeling of betrayal. Financial services, upon which so much of the City depends, were not included in the Brexit agreement with the EU; bank bosses are constantly complaining about the difficult of doing business with the EU; and daily, the drift of bankers relocating to the likes of Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam increases.