Nick Clegg to tell business leaders: we’re your friends

Nick Clegg is giving a speech this evening in which he will try to re-sell the Liberal Democrats as friends of business. Admitting that he hasn’t ‘said enough’ about the party’s pro-business policies, he will tell the guests at Mansion House:

‘Many in the corporate world do not – automatically – see the Liberal Democrats as natural allies. Perhaps that’s because, most recently, we’ve rightly earned ourselves a reputation as loud critics of corporate irresponsibility… Not least in financial service following the crash in 2008. Yet, historically, the Liberal Democrats are a party of industrialists and small business… And, since coming into government, we’ve been taking decisions, day in, day out, to promote British business.’

Those decisions include ‘ensuring a sensible approach to Europe’, a ‘sensible approach to immigration’ and ‘pushing for more investment in green industry’. Strangely enough, these are all areas where the two coalition parties disagree.