The Tactical Proceeds of Managing the Growth Story.

Look away now if you’re not interested in UK politics!

 

 I was at the Business Department when newly elected Prime Minister Cameron, followed by the new Business Secretary Vince Cable, visited to meet the troops. I even managed to get a plum spot behind a 6’7” policy director so didn’t see a huge amount except the head of David Willets which, I can exclusively report, is very much like you’d imagine David Willets' head to look like.  If you look carefully you can see me standing on tip topes in the BBC report of the occasion.  

 Vince’s opening gambit left a lot to be desired, reminding everyone that for years he’d argued there was no reason for a Business Department at all! “As you can imagine I’ve had a rapid conversion since being appointed Secretary of State.”

At the time I was confused by the PM’s short speech stressing the Department’s central role in promoting growth in the private sector.  It seemed very much a central theme to the new administration’s messaging and rightly so. But in the months preceding the CSR we didn’t hear a huge amount about it. I think that apart from setting tax environment and ensuring regulation is appropriate there isn’t a huge amount the Government can do in this area. Nevertheless this was a clear tactic – get the CSR done and then promote the ‘growth agenda’ heavily as per Cable and Cameron’s CBI speech yesterday. There will also be a white paper in due course.

I haven’t read either of the CBI speeches but I wonder how Gordon Brown would have handled the balancing act if he was doing the same CSR (fantasy land, that). No doubt he would banged on about growth at as many points in the speech as possible, and inevitably the media narrative would have focused on the cuts affecting different groups – lower income groups, middle class, the elderly, long term sick, the growth agenda  then lost in the mire.

 This is an interesting tactic, but I doubt it will overcome the media narrative, too many juicy human interest misery stories to fill the papers over the next few years. So The Sun headline Cameron’s speech get is “Lend, you bankers! Prime Minister Cameron demands banks lend more to business,” well if I had a pound for every time I’d heard that over the last two years I could have bailed RBS out myself by now.

Meanwhile the Telegraph’s website story focuses on Cable’s sly dig at his colleagues, “I don’t mean to be mischievous when I point out that even my Conservative Coalition colleagues were busy developing policies about 'sharing the proceeds of growth’; the assumption – widely shared – being that strong growth was bound to continue.”

It goes on to report, “The Business Secretary also used his speech to the annual CBI conference to attack company chief executives over their pay packages and announced a consultation on improving corporate governance.” ….Consultation…. bonuses and senior pay… sounds like a lot of activity rather than action to me, sadly.  

The end result is the growth agenda as it is promoted now may be the powerful ‘quote stick’ used to beat the Government if we don’t see private sector growth and increased employment in the next 4 – 5 years.  Indeed  figures out this morning are showing a slow down in growth in the UK economy.