Michael Moore’s Outlook: Four investment tests amid the political comings and goings
Listening to Sir Tony Blair on the radio, most recently on the subject of the future of the UK Prime Minister, ages me.
That’s not a complaint about time lost which I will never get back. It’s just that to hear his familiar tones returns me to my earliest days in Parliament in 1997, when he himself was newly Prime Minister and I was on the Opposition benches at the start of an eighteen year stint in the House of Commons. Boy is that a long time ago.
He led the government for ten years, only outdone in longevity in the twentieth century by Margaret Thatcher. But the (less demanding) benchmark applied to everyone else was that a premier should be there for at least one parliamentary term of 4 or 5 years to be deemed a ‘success’ (at least on the survival front).
How we laughed as we pointed at continental Europe, often specifically at Italy, and shook our heads at the short tenures of their prime ministers. Indeed, from the 1950s to the end of the last century, Italian leaders lasted barely a year and a bit. We are not laughing now.
It is only two years since the last UK general election, at which the promise of getting rid of the unpredictability of government under the Conservatives was at least as big a factor, for some investors, as any perspectives they might have on the programme of the then Opposition Labour party.
And there are still three years to go until a general election has to happen (– you may note a careful choice of language there). However, for some time now Sir Keir Starmer’s future in 10 Downing Street has been questioned, and since Labour’s properly dreadful (to use the technical term) election results in early May his authority has been openly challenged.
Manoeuvring for position is part of political life, but it is now high speed, high wire stuff. It is such an extraordinary moment that the Prime Minister’s most prominent opponent, and the top tip by many to be our next Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, isn’t even in Parliament (or wasn’t when I wrote this).
How does this end? Who knows. Writing this in the columnist’s ‘valley of death’, caught between the safe ground of knowing the May results, but not knowing the outcome of the by-election in Makerfield, where Mr Burnham is standing, there is only partial hindsight available to aid me, so I hope you will be sympathetic.
Investors hate uncertainty, for sure. But as I have observed in the past, private capital investors are better than most at separating out signal from political noise. Brexit, Ukraine, Trump? Big change, pay attention. Party leaders coming and going, parties losing elections? Let me know if it matters, but don’t distract me meantime.
This takes me back to my (very high level) ‘four investment tests’ – macro stability, world-class regulation, an internationally-competitive investment climate and predictable policy frameworks (for the sectors in which the capital is deployed). These are the things that matter most.
For now, as we have seen since the Truss Show of 2022, the markets will continue to discipline the UK Prime Minister, whoever it is, to maintain macro stability (notwithstanding some interesting takes on the bond markets by senior contenders to be PM).
The regulatory trajectory is looking fairly predictable (without losing sight of the Bank of England’s scrutiny of private markets) and the policy frameworks for areas in which private capital invests are reasonably settled, thanks to the industrial strategy (however slowly many of the supporting measures are being put in place), until the election.
That leaves the investment climate test with perhaps the biggest degree of risk.
There is no question that recent chatter about capital gains taxes and questions about whether private capital-backed businesses should run public services is keeping us focused. And we will remain alert and engaged.
But it is now pretty well accepted that private capital is essential to growth. And that investor confidence about the UK as a competitive jurisdiction and an attractive place to deploy capital are key to sustaining the investment. So whoever is in charge of the UK government at the end of this year will need to have this front of mind. We certainly won’t be letting up on any of it.
Unsettling as all these political comings and goings are, focus matters – our industry’s and that of the government, whoever forms it. There is a path to navigate here, and we must hope it is less exposed and more predictable than those our senior politicians are currently traversing. Our fingers are duly crossed.
Michael Moore
Chief Executive, UK Private Capital
This article was originally published on 1 June 2026 on the Private Equity News website here.