On 2 February, Walgreens Boots Alliance stated, "The comments made by Stefano Pessina were a small part of a much larger conversation and have been taken out of context ... Stefano Pessina was expressing his personal views only and is not campaigning against Ed Miliband or the Labour Party." On 6 February, Allister Heath, deputy Editor of The Telegraph, described the "attacks" by Labour and Liberal Democrat politicians on Pessina, "one of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs", as being "as nonsensical as they were indefensible".
