Iceland Foods executive chairman Richard Walker is set to be named as a Labour peer by prime minister Keir Starmer.
Walker – who was previously selected as a prospective Conservative election candidate – is to be named as one of 25 new Labour appointees to the House of Lords, reported The Sun over the weekend.
Neither Labour nor Walker is yet to publicly confirm the appointment, which is set to be announced before Christmas.
The public face of the supermarket his father Malcolm founded 55 years ago, Walker has previously made no secret of his desire for a career in politics, as a regular face on the BBC’s Question Time and ITV’s Good Morning Britain, as well as in the mainstream press.
He has led public campaigns calling for the easing of restrictions on the sale of baby formula, as well as sought to raise awareness about the impact of Alzheimer’s disease on families by climbing Mount Everest.
Having previously publicly and financially backed the Conservatives, Walker sought election as an MP and was added to the Tories’ list of approved MP selection candidates in 2022.
However, he resigned from the Conservatives in October 2023, publicly switching allegiance to Labour, claiming that the Conservatives – who were then in government under Rishi Sunak – had “drifted out of touch with business and the economy”.
In the time since, he has had regular meetings with key Labour figures, hosting Chancellor Rachel Reeves at an Iceland store in Fulham in 2024 to discuss the cost of living crisis. He has also held face to face meetings with then justice secretary Shabana Mahmood as part of Iceland’s ’Second Chance’ prisoner employment programme.
In December 2024, he was initially one of few grocery chiefs to defend Labour’s autumn budget, which heaped employment and tax costs on the sector, telling business to “stop wallowing” and adapt to the measures.
He has since hit back at some of the measures, voicing support for farmers protesting changes to Inheritance Tax, as well as called for the government to go further on planning reforms.
His appointment as a peer comes less than three months after he declared to retail leaders at the FT’s Future of Retail Event that he was on “long-term hibernation from politics”.
No comments yet