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With the prospect of a Conservative government growing ever greater, business leaders are suffering from a bad attack of "Be careful what you wish for, in case you get it".
A few weeks ago, retiring CBI president Martin Broughton expressed his alarm at the lack of engagement between Tory politicians and business, and the absence of any policies he and his fellow business leaders could get their teeth into.
That clearly set the alarm bells ringing in the boardrooms. This week came news of a major lobbying effort by companies to get their views heard by David Cameron and his colleagues before the drafting this autumn of the manifesto with which the Tories will go into the election.
Their concern is understandable because the few ideas the Tories have floated veer alarmingly between the half-baked and the frankly insane. It is, for example, recognised by almost everyone in the country that Britain's planning laws are chaotic, result in delays that add hugely to the cost of essential projects and mean some works that are clearly desirable simply never get started. The country's crumbling infrastructure is one result.
Labour had finally put in place an over-arching planning body that could fast-track decisions on nuclear power, airports, roads, railways, ports and other infrastructure to stop them getting bogged down for years.
This is because the Government finally understood that removing or mitigating the planning uncertainty is essential if the private sector is to be expected to commit capital to projects such as nuclear power or airport terminals. Otherwise, they are simply not bankable.
But the Conservatives appear not to buy the argument, and intend to scrap the new body as soon as they get into office - much to the despair of everyone concerned about the parlous state of Britain's infrastructure, who wonder in these capital-constrained times how anything big, costly and complex will now get built in this country.
Conservative ideas to abolish tax relief on debt interest payments would also have huge consequences. That would at a stroke pull the rug out from under the entire water industry, which relies so heavily on debt finance that businesses with 85% gearing still qualify for a double A rating. It is the same pattern in electricity and some other utilities. So while there are powerful arguments in favour of abolishing the relief and removing the bias in favour of debt over equity capital, it is not something to be done casually or on a whim. Even if beneficial, the consequences are far-reaching and will create some dramatic losers.
The same could be said about the Lisbon Treaty and the prospect, admittedly still vague, that the Tories will have a referendum on it and campaign against its ratification. Were this to happen, such a referendum would inevitably be hijacked by the UK Independence Party and turned in the public mind into a vote on whether or not we should stay in the European Union at all. Indeed, Ukip members today openly state that this would be their intention.
While this may be seen as a sensible policy by some people in some parts of the UK, the decision to pull out of one of the world's biggest markets, or even seriously to question continued EU membership, would be viewed in almost every other capital in the world as proof that Britain had finally lost the plot. The collapse of confidence in the UK's ability to pay its way in the world - an ability that is already under question - would follow.
Sterling would plunge just at the time when we need foreigners to have confidence in the currency so they will continue to buy Government debt. Without foreign buyers of gilts, the Government finances would also probably collapse, given the scale of this country's indebtedness.
This may not happen. One has to hope it will not happen. But the point is that the Tory front bench, in blithely flirting with a referendum and pursuing its populist line in anti-EU rhetoric, seems not even to be aware of the possibility. That is something which should alarm not just business but all of us.
Crunch or not, it's hard to stay rich
Merrill Lynch and Capgemini have just published this year's version of their world wealth report, which contains the news that the credit crunch has made the seriously wealthy a lot more serious, and a lot less wealthy.
The number of those with more than $30 million (£18.3 million) shrank by a quarter in the market turmoil after the Lehman collapse, and the overall wealth of the seriously rich shrank by the same amount.
The deeper truth, though, is that even without a financial crisis, the rich find it hard to hold on to their money.
About four years ago, JPMorgan Chase did an analysis of the original Sunday Times Rich List, first published in 1989. They looked at the top 200 way back then, and checked up on what had happened to them since. The results were startling. Only 43 of that original list were still in the top 200 who figured in the then latest list and of these only nine had improved their position in the league table. Meanwhile, among the original 200, more than half of them were less well off and 91 of those rich enough to have made the original top 200 did not even figure in the top 1000 of the latest table.
It seems that while it is hard to make a fortune, it is harder still to keep it - even without a credit crunch.
