Miliband is wooing business. Good luck with that As I have said before, Labour's business policies matter because the Leader of the Opposition is still the bookmakers" favourite to hold the keys to Number 10 after the next general election. The party is 8/13 to win the most seats in May 2015 and 6/4 to hold a majority. The same figures for the Conservatives are 5/4 and 11/4. If Mr Miliband is the next resident of No 10 Downing Street, then business will have to consider how it engages with the new prime minister, an instinctive state interventionist. Avenues have already been opened. I am told that Mr Miliband and his right-hand man, Lord Wood of Anfield, are reaching out to corporations in an effort to at least explain their position, poor as it is. They hope Labour can neutralise any "anti-business" backlash before the next election, a particularly potent weapon for the Conservatives as growth returns and the private sector increases employment and pay. One chairman of a FTSE 100 company who has been given the full Milibeam treatment left the meeting feeling a little nonplussed. "I could see he was making an intellectual argument about needing to work with business, but I wasn't convinced his heart was in it," he said. The fact that the chairman in question has energy interests maybe explains a lot. Another chief executive of a FTSE 100 company left a similar "getting to know you" session describing it as one of the most awkward he had ever had the displeasure of attending. Mr Miliband appeared under-briefed and only seemed to have a passing understanding of and interest in the business the CEO led. It is difficult to see how Mr Miliband will succeed in his endeavours. Lord Wood is an academic and policy expert who does not have the advantage of having actually run a business for a living or even worked in the private sector. He was special adviser to Gordon Brown, not the most attractive of CV entries for many in the business world. Mr Miliband is equally conflicted. The chairman who met the Leader of the Opposition is right - he may have an intellectual argument about the need to tackle competition issues and free up smaller businesses, but his heart is set a flutter by increasing taxes on businesses and controlling prices via regulation. Given that neither policy is economically logical, business leaders are right to reject his thinking. Mr Miliband has one reasonably sound club in his golf bag and a probable conduit to power if he should ever be in charge of forming a government. His name is Chuka Umunna, the shadow business secretary, who I am sure is largely biting his tongue on some of the wilder business policies of his leader. Mr Umunna was the man behind last weekend's excellent Small Business Saturday, when the public was encouraged to place their custom with small, independent firms. He is also asking the right questions of the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, over the report by Lawrence Tomlinson that claimed on thin evidence that the Royal Bank of Scotland was engaged in a systemic attempt to close down struggling businesses so the bank could sell off assets cheaply. Mr Umunna wants to know what due diligence process the report went through before it was published and before it was given the departmental stamp of authority. If Mr Miliband really wants to engage with business then he needs to fundamentally change his tone and his approach - not simply set up meetings over stale biscuits. He cannot keep swinging punches with one hand while waving businesses into his inner-sanctum with the other. Businesses will see it for what it is - phoney. To create business policies that actually work rather than appeal to a brigade of supporters who want to shackle markets rather than free them, Mr Miliband needs to listen a little more and declaim a little less. Sadly, there is little evidence of either. Bank ring-fencing: Be careful what you wish for Quietly, and with little recent coverage, Britain's banks are being split apart. George Osborne's plans to "ring-fence" retail operations from investment divisions are reaching the final stages of the parliamentary process. The regulations will soon be on the statute book. As I have long argued, the ring-fence plans are the wrong solution to a significant problem. The banks that failed in the financial crisis were retail (Northern Rock, HBOS), investment (Lehman's) or a mixture of both (RBS). Even RBS's disastrous takeover of ABN Amro would have been better halted with higher and strongly enforced capital requirements rather than a split of the bank. On Monday, a report by the Policy Exchange think tank reveals many of the problems. I would urge everyone to read it, as Policy Exchange is not only a serious operation - it is also very close to the Treasury. Neil O'Brien, its former head, is now the Chancellor's special adviser. The Policy Exchange report says that the increased costs and lower revenues created by the ring-fence could mean the end of free banking and the closure of high street branches. As always, the consumer pays the ultimate cost of new regulations. The Treasury should ensure that the new rules are interpreted as flexibly as possible. Crippling our banks ultimately helps no one.