CAN CONSTRUCTION EVER LEARN TO LOVE LABOUR?

May 22, 1997, the latest date by which the next general election must be held, may seem a little too remote for construction to get desperately excited about the Labour Party's opinion poll popularity. But that, of course, is to disregard the far likelier truth that the Government's political difficulties will force a snap election at some much more imminent stage. Many who have suffered in this industry will fervently hope that this election will at last draw the curtains on the Tory Party's tenure on power since 1979.

It is this later scenario that makes the current contacts between construction chiefs and senior Labour politicians crucial ones for our industry.

To illustrate through just one example, it was only when JT Design chief executive Roy Paramour was able to meet with Labour Arts spokesman Mark Fisher last year that the Party desisted from its irrational yet strongly voiced attacks on design and build.

The contractors talking now with Labour are unlikely to have such instant success on, say, the future role of unions and direct labour organisations. But there are many other issues where frank exchanges now may nip future acrimony in the bud, or even help steer Labour towards positively helpful policy initiatives.

Encouragingly, what is emerging from talks held so far is that Labour appears to be a party that construction can do business with. On issues like harnessing the slumbering capital receipt billions to rebuild ravaged communities and get the unemployed back to work, Labour has a deep commitment that will benefit the industry enormously.

This traditional neo-Keynesian thinking is to be expected, and is no less welcome for that. But over and beyond this, so keen is Labour to show its new reformed status, that is eagerly stealing Tory clothes. The private finance initiative has been warmly embraced by the socialists and there are promises that anything the Tories can do here, 'we can do better'.

Similarly housing. Housebuilders federation president Charles Gallagher is not alone in seeing the Opposition as more friendly to hearth and home than its time-honoured promoters at Central Office. A little of the inflation growth that has so often accompanied Labour during its previous spells at the tiller would, needless to say, not go amiss for either this sector or property developers generally.

Whether all these two-way charm offensives amount to true love is still too early to say. It is after all a fact that though construction output is generally boosted under Labour, the industry's politics incline towards the right. Rising tax rates under socialism firmly underpin that natural sympathy. And however abysmally the Tories have performed their economic duties during this present term of office, it is clear that they can rely on the grudging, deeply grudging, support of many of those who currently tell pollsters they will be voting Labour.

For Tony Blair to truly woo this industry, he will have to convince them the tax burden will not increase substantially. It would be ironic indeed, therefore, if the private finance initiative - since 1979, the Tories' pet ploy in theory if not in deed - allows Labour to deliver its rebuilding programme without recourse to boosting income tax.