What’s this latest nonsense from Jeremy Corbyn then? Workers to be represented on company boards, and customers too? A binding annual vote on bosses’ pay?
It’s dangerous leftist rubbish and the City will never wear it. If he ever gets in and forces that lot through the Commons the few remaining businesses left in the UK post Brexit will hop it to more favourable climes faster than it takes the average CEO to tot up their annual bonus.
What’s that you say? Theresa May said it? No, surely it’s from the Daily Mash or some other satirical website.
You mean it’s actually in a speech?
Yes indeed. Delivered shortly before Angela Leadsom, her rival in the race to become Prime Minister, pulled out because she couldn’t cope with journalists being mean to her, Ms May pledged to put the Conservative Party at the service of, oh please don’t say it, “ordinary working people”.
It’s a terribly patronising phrase, but there was nothing patronising about her proposals for putting it into practice. The prospective new PM put forward a sweeping set of reforms to the way companies are run, including proposing the sort of things previously only voiced by dangerous radicals such as myself and other progressive thinkers.
She attacked the “narrow social and professional circles” that dominate Britain’s boardrooms arguing that “the scrutiny they provide is just not good enough”. Rah rah!!! My cup runneth over. And for a Conservative to say this? Well, the times surely are a changin’.
One or two unkind people suggested that Ms May had robbed Ed Milliband’s clothes after the speech was delivered. It’s actually as much a return to Tony Blair’s concept of a “stakeholder” society. Except that he never had the guts to put the sort of measures being proposed by Ms May into practice. But we live in a post referendum world and it seems that Brexit is going to do more than change Britain’s relationship with the EU. It is going to fundamentally change its relationship with business.
If that happens it will mark a rare piece of sweet fruit in the midst of a bitter harvest. If workers were to have more involvement in the way their employers are run it ought to result in better managed businesses. Germany’s great companies have had worker representation on their boards for years. The concept hasn’t hurt them, or Germany’s powerhouse of an economy. Au contraire.
There is a reason for this radicalism on the part of Ms May. The lesson of the EU referendum was that vast swathes of the British population don’t feel they have much of a stake in modern Britain. The EU referendum gave them their a rare chance to give voice to their discontent. Even if those in deprived areas who voted “out” ultimately feel more pain than anyone from the economic damage of doing so.
Ms May has clearly recognised this, but if she truly means what she says, she’s going to find herself in the middle of a nasty fight.
The business community is already reeling from the impact of Brexit. It is aghast at the prospect of it meaning the end of Britain’s access to the single market and appalled at Ms May’s equivocation on the rights of workers from the EU. With every justification. It would be a shame if a rare ray of light in the darkness of Brexit Britain was snuffed out to appease a restive business lobby. But I fear that that is what might ultimately happen.
