“It is pointless to deny now that there is an ethical crisis in British capitalism. The issue is not just the primacy of cash extraction over investment. There is a deeper malaise that has blurred the distinction between enterprise and racketeering.
When Ed Miliband drew that line in a speech in 2011 he found himself in the press pillory reserved for politicians of the left whose rhetoric is insufficiently deferential to business. But Mr Miliband was on to something and, slowly, ever greater numbers of Conservatives are drawing the same conclusions. Tory MPs are prominent in the charge to see Sir Philip stripped of his knighthood. There is a recognition on the right that rising anti-corporate sentiment cannot be written off as an envious leftwing ideological tantrum. It expresses justified outrage at a system that allows rich and powerful individuals to wreak social and economic havoc with impunity.
With breathtaking cynicism, hardline Eurosceptics even try to steer this sentiment against Britain’s EU membership, denouncing Brussels as a corporate conspiracy. In truth, workers and consumers need protections agreed at a European level to prevent cross-border competitive junking of rights leading to more rampant exploitation – Brexit’s real destination.
The new Tory critique of rapacious capitalism points towards the potential for a new consensus. It might encourage business leaders to discover that their self-interest lies in a more enlightened approach to workers’ rights and acceptance of wider social responsibilities. Most businesses would welcome such a shift and most politicians would gladly facilitate one. The idea that all capitalism is cruel and that private profit is all theft from the public is confined to the left-most fringe. Likewise, only a handful of ultras on the right now believe that all regulation is a suffocation of economic freedom.
A workable solution to the challenge posed by cases such as BHS, Boots and Sports Direct can come about only through a partnership of business and politics. The full force of existing laws must be applied, and the bully pulpit of the Commons should be used to greater effect. But that is just a prelude to a cultural change, whereby the spirit of enterprise might more plausibly be invoked as a force for progress. Too often now it is a cover for something much darker.”
East Devon Watch 