I cannot help but say I was disappointed to read this in the Guardian:
Labour needs to reset its relationship with business, one of the frontrunners for the party leadership is to say, adding that former leader Ed Miliband's divisional rhetoric of “predators and producers” was mistaken.
Yvette Cooper will on Tuesday also promise to back government plans to cut corporation tax and vow that she will set up a prominent business advisory group that will advise her as party leader.
There is, if course, no reason at all why Yvette Cooper should not want to talk to big business. Any politician should do so. But the comments that follow do not logically flow from that desire.
As a matter of fact there are predator businesses that seek to extract value from, rather than contribute to, the society we live in. This can be through tax avoidance. It can be by abusing their commercial power. No politician should be ashamed to say so.
And no politician should be above highlighting government waste, including the granting of tax rate cuts that have not delivered on the promise of boosting investment, which was the reason why they were supposedly given. In that case to commit to continuing a multi-billion pound error just looks like a mistake.
And, to come back to that business advisory group, why (as is implied) restrict it to business people? Don't employees and their representatives belong on there? And what about investors too? Or the pensioners who rely on those businesses? And the stakeholders who have to live alongside them? Will they get a say, and if not, why not?
The reality is that such groups do not represent business, they represent its management, which is a tiny sub-group who have by and large captured the benefit of the business owned by others for their own personal gain - a definition of predatory behaviour if ever there was one. I am afraid the language of wealth creators crept in when referring to such people later in the article as if they are a breed apart. I have to say I do not agree: they are a part in the wealth creation process in which a great many others play as significant a role. They capture an excessive part of the reward but that should not give them undue influence. It is to be regretted that any political party wishes to give them that, but that seems to be the current way of the world. It will, as some wise people said in my time, end in tears.
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In the wake of the news the UK is the most unequal country in the EU I can’t think of any reason for any political party to be giving business even further tax breaks.
Agreed
Are we seriously being asked to believe that Labour has not been listening to business/management. I really wonder how long the public will continue to believe things which are self evidently at odds with the facts.
I am English and I wonder just what is it about the English?
It was the English in the UK that put Cameron back in Number 10, to administer a government which we know will act against the economic interests of most English people.
Maybe there is just something about the English that makes them gravitate towards conservatism.
Despite the proud history of English radicalism; from the Levellers, Thomas Paine, the Chartists & the Suffragettes et al, maybe once some progress has been made and privilege successfully challenged, there is something in the English nature that compels them to undermine earlier progress.
Something that makes their political pendulum swing back to the right; something that reverts like senility, back to short term selfish me me me conservatism.
We’re still in the throes of the latest such regressive example: the right has been chipping away at all the progress made in the post war settlement since 1979 successfully dismantling all that good work.
Since then the right — AKA as Tories & New Labour – has sought to do away with social housing and tertiary education being available for working people. They have relished slashing our welfare safety net, selling off public assets and removing all the enablers which helped working class children move upwards.
And now up pops Cooper, another right wing New Labour chancer looking to lead a once great Labour Party by being more Tory than the Tories.
Every nation has its faults, and maybe this English self-flagellating trait is ours.
Yvette Cooper’s words sound like a load of Balls to me!!!!
How utterly depressing. I did not hear Ed Milliband trashing business- this rewriting of what Labour under Ed Milliband was saying and endorsing of a Tory agenda is a disaster. What is the point of a Labour party? Perhaps the best solution is for the real supporters of fairness and a more equal society decamp to the Green Party and let the Labour Tories find their home with the Tory party.
Ed Miliband was no more left than tories before Thatcher; in fact his labour party was to the right of that.
The rewriting of history is precisely correct. It is no accident that the right came out of the woodwork with a fully fledged narrative ripe and ready to go. The fact that their “successful” policy won elections while losing some 5 million of their core vote is airbrushed out. Losing the core vote is slow: but there comes a tipping point; and it has been passed in Scotland. It is only a matter of time in England, I think (some of the time: the rest of the time I fear that John is right, in his post above – but that is for darker moments). Neoliberals unite in telling us what to think and they have immense resources: but they are not omnipotent. And competing with tories for tory votes is a hiding to nothing in the long run.
I do not think the Greens will fill the gap in England: but a left of centre party must emerge one way or the other. I honestly believe that will happen: and I no longer think that party will be a revived labour party.
I am very near to thinking a new left of centre party is essential
I’m inclined to plump for an anti-neoliberal party made from both the former Left and the Right. We’ve said before on this blog that the arguments are no longer left vs right, well, we need and should have parties to represent that.
Absolutely – the one dimensional, monochrome, left-right view of the world is past its sell by date. And I’d like to see some positive thinking – what are we ‘for’ rather than just ‘against’
Will Hutton has put a lot more comprehensive thought into it than most. Mariana Mazzucato on the state and investment, and then some of the broader based green economy work, which links economic and social development back to environmental challenges – and opportunities.
Any other suggestions? And ideas as to where this kind of serious, creative, holistic thinking is going on?
Read my book The Courageous State?
Sorry Richard – how could I have missed that out!
Couldn’t agree more. What IS the point of the Labour party?
They serve the Tories by appearing to be opposition when more realistically they’re only about amelioration. A true opposition wouldn’t be trying to improve the conditions of the working man, they’d be trying to restore the independence most had when they lived independent and self-sustaining lives on The Commons centuries ago, from which they were forced off purely so they could be exploited. A genuine opposition would be an anti-exploitation party. No more wealth extraction!
Cooper is quite seriously wrong about reducing corporation tax. Is she saying that tax to fund a functioning developed state should come from middle classes and squeezed middle, because that is what it sounds like. Business is of course very important, indeed I worked for a company in the West Midlands making heavy capital plant. Sadly this company is no more. What we really need is a proper industrial strategy compiled by people who know what they are talking about (unlike former spads!!).
I really despair of the current intellectual capacity of the so-called leading lights in the Labour Party. It does seem that Ed Miliband had to do all the intellectual heavy lifting himself. Additionally it is very bad mannered for Cooper to criticise Miliband in this way. She displays no loyalty and surely this is evidence of her character.
Labour seems able to talk right now
But thinking does seem to be beyond it
I imagine this is Cooper assuring herself of a cosy boardroom position after her retirement from politics. When Labour’s SoS for W&P she endeared herself to the disabled community by approving legislation which denied armless people full points in their benefits assessment on the basis they could lift parcels with their stumps and so could not be described as not fit for work, and similarly people with walking difficulties could also not be so described on the basis they could use wheelchairs they didn’t have and couldn’t get. She promptly became known as the ‘imaginary wheelchair’ woman. Let’s hope that retirement comes soon.
Oh dear – so now it’s the business community that won the election for the Tories is it? They are the only constituency worth talking to obviously.
But I mean really….? Cooper & Co need to be talking to a lot of people – not just business.
It is far far too late for that, I think. They do not appear to know that there is anyone else out there.
Perhaps they ought to be thinking a bit more about what it is they want to talk about and then work out who the stakeholders should be in that conversation. ‘Business’ is a means to an end – what is that end?
There is a hugely important conversation to be had about how the country generates its wealth in future and how that is shared. That encompasses (amongst other things) where and how investment takes place, to generate innovation and decent jobs. And I mean investment rather than the the speculative trading and asset bubble pumping that predominate in today’s City, which in turn has a malign influence on ‘real’ business. That also means investment by the state as well as business. And begs some serious questions about the future role and activities of the City to get it back to providing financial services to other sectors rather than just servicing itself. What has been called a mixed economy
I did not hear much from any of the parties on this, perhaps a hint from the LibDems. The Tories are fixated now on a pure market economy with little or no role for the state and the lowest level of regulation and labour practices they can get away with. Its a big mistake to assume that all businesses are happy with that situation, especially the ones that are at the more innovative and high tech end, or smaller firms that cannot play international games with their taxes
Sadly I heard very little from Labour to convince me that they have any kind of overall vision or narrative. Being ‘pro-business’ does not have to mean just being low tax and anti regulation. It does mean showing some kind of grasp as how and where innovation and jobs might develop in future, and the role of the state in supporting and encouraging that
I fear that I may be waiting some time
I am not sure any party showed it really understood business in its widest sense
It’s time they did
Agreed
More constructively, there is a large hole crying out be filled, but preferably not by the usual suspects