Lord Sugar tells Labour 'you're fired'

Lord Sugar, one of the UK's highest profile entrepreneurs, has quit Labour over the party's anti-business stance in the run-up to last week's general election.

The peer and star of The Apprentice TV reality show said he had told the party he was resigning the day after Labour had been defeated at the polls by the Conservatives.

"I informed the party on Friday of my decision to resign which they accepted as they had been aware of my disillusionment for some time," he said in a statement.<

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Lord Sugar, who received a life peerage in 2009, said he was ending his 18-year association with Labour because of the "negative business policies and the general anti-enterprise concepts they were considering if they were to be elected."

Lord Sugar briefly served as unofficial "Enterprise Champion" in Gordon Brown's Labour government in 2009 and 2010.

Over the past year, some senior business leaders with links to Labour had expressed misgivings about the direction of the party but Lord Sugar had remained quiet. Chief among their concerns was the promise to freeze energy bills and the plans to raise the top rate tax rate back from 45p to 50p.

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"I was originally brought into the party by Gordon Brown during an era where true enterprise was being supported by the party. I signed on to New Labour in 1997 but more recently, particularly in relation to business, I sensed a policy shift moving back towards what Old Labour stood for," he said, adding that he had made the decision to quit at the start of the year.

He said he had expressed his misgivings to the "most senior figures in the party several times." But he chose not to reveal his "disillusionment" and desire to quit before the election because he is "a loyal person" and did not want to "damage the party's chances" at the polls.

At the grassroots level, however, Labour said membership was bouncing back and that 20,000 people had joined since Thursday night, taking the membership to 221,247. Some 60% of the new members were under 35, according to The Guardian.

Lord Sugar said he planned to continue to take his seat in the House of Lords and represent the interests of business and enterprise.

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