I have an article in The Mirror this morning.
Taking a deeply cynical view of yesterday's posturing by Rishi Sunak on foreign direct investment, the article is headlined:
I began by saying:
Hampton Court, the royal palace beloved by Henry VIII 500 years ago, played host to the government's Global Investment Summit yesterday.
Where King Henry romanced a few of his six wives, Rishi Sunak spent the day wooing foreign investors said to be putting £29.5billion into the UK economy. Excuse my cynicism, but it is not quite the good news the Prime Minister would like us to believe.
From thereon, I made clear that if we have to celebrate foreign direct investment in the way that Sunak is doing, there are real issues that we need to address, including:
- The lack of British innovation
- Underinvestment by the UK in the UK, including by the government.
- That we are selling Britain cheaply, including on tax.
- That foreign direct investment is often 'fly-by-night'.
- That if, as the supposed second largest financial services centre in the world, the UK cannot find funding from the City of London, then there is something wrong with the way it is functioning.
- All of which suggests a government entirely out of ideas, except when it comes to Labour bashing, which the day obviously was.
As I concluded:
[Sunak] should have put a banner above the entrance to yesterday's conference saying ‘Help – we're in trouble. All donations gratefully received'.
There was nothing to celebrate unless, you're a PM wanting a job in California sometime soon.
Overly cynical? I don't think so.
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Overly cynical? No, I don’t think so either. It also looked like self-promotion to me, too. I wouldn’t hire him, though. To do anything.
Refreshing to hear, for a change, about the downsides of ‘Inward Investment’.
It strikes me that too many commentators seem to think that overseas investors are gifting the UK money without asking what they are going to get in return which, surely, must be more than they put in.
Time for the full quote now:
“This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear’d by their breed and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
Of the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s Son,
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!”
Shakespeare, Richard II.
🙂
Ho could write….
“With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds” seems to me a perfect description of just about everything the Treaty-busting Johnson, and post-Johnson (mal)administrations have done. I mean, consider government intent on passing legislation to nullify part of its Treaty obligations, as Johnson did over Northern Ireland. And Braverman’s illegal Rwanda farce.
“Inky blots” for the first, and “rotten parchment bonds” for the second indeed!