Rebuilding the Enterprise Economy

The Financial Times is for three things: big public spending, big Europe and big unaccountable elites. The FT's editorial today is a classic, if disappointing, example of the genre. Too often in FT-World, the powerful, distant elites of Brussels and the UK public and private sectors seem to be the fount of all wisdom, to be rewarded to excess simply for being there. Democracy to them seems to be a sort of evil necessity that has to be put up with from time to time. In their World, we would have joined the Euro long ago, seen a new rise in the corporatism that so failed our land in the 1970s and continued to allow the richest to fill their boots with massive, unjustified bonuses.

 

No-one seems to have told the FT that things have have moved on. We now need to look to our national future. It's a real shame that the FT is so stuck in the past and so completely out of touch with modern Britain. Get outside Whitehall or the City of London and go to the doorsteps of places like Dover and Deal and people are incoherent with rage. Unlike the FT, they are patriots with a powerful sense of nation. They feel the excess of the bankers and the Labour Government have seriously harmed Britain.

 

Rather than wanting to see things carry on as they are, they invariably ask "will the Conservatives be strong enough to do what needs to be done" on the public finances. I look them in the eye and say we must be or we will have higher unemployment for longer and risk a lost generation of our young people. This is why for us it's not just about the Age of Austerity - it's about the return to growth, the rebuilding of the Enterprise Economy and the stronger Britain we could build together. It's about bringing success back to these shores, with more jobs and money.

 

And George Osborne is absolutely right to point out that rewards should be linked to longer term performance. How did it ever make sense to be any other way? Especially when it comes to retail banking which is more like a utility than a growth engine. The need is not for more money for senior retail bankers, it is for more cash to small and medium sized businesses. Those businesses are the growth engine of our land. Recognition of this truth was one of Margaret Thatcher's key achievements.

 

It's simply unacceptable in the bust to hand out money like confetti any more. An excellent job done deserves an excellent reward at every level of society - yet it must be earned. There must be a return and a profit. That goes for the public sector too. It's quite wrong the head of the FSA is trousering bonuses when the banking system collapses around his ears. And what exactly has the head of Network Rail done to deserve his £200K bonus? This list goes on and on. What do all these quango heads and senior civil servants do to deserve massive bonuses? It is to be hoped that the Age of Austerity will also apply to them. Outside central London, people do not find flaming ferraris and the rest of it the least bit funny. Be it in the public or private sector. They are already feeling the pain and look askance at the apparent rewards for failure. They feel we should all be in it together.

 

In the Age of Responsibility, it's necessary to ensure pay and bonuses are Responsible and Justified at every level of society. And to get liquidity to the smaller businesses that are essential if we are to make the return to growth a reality.