For years I have been critical of current and previous governments because they lacked a systematic policy to promote long term wealth creation covering everything from pensions and investment to company law and public procurement.
Now at last we are seeing the emergence of a much more systematic approach by the PM but, disastrously it is a systematic approach to destroy the foundations for long term wealth creation in the UK.
Theresa May cannot be unaware of the business disruption she is causing. It’s not just her actions and deliberate neglect driving a UK airline to bankruptcy or telling auto industry investors they’d be mad to invest here. Not just government policy paralysis on everything not related to No Deal preparation. Not just private sector cash blown on stockpiling. Not just goods leaving foreign ports without anyone knowing the trading regime that will be in force when they arrive. Soon it will end as the harsh reality, worst for the poor, of rising food prices and empty shelves and the effects of 100,000 NHS vacancies and shortages of vital medicines.
I’ve been trying to think of a historical precedent for any Prime Minister knowingly planning such damage to wealth creation and I can’t find any. Can you? Maggie Thatcher decimated manufacturing with the high pound but she at least used it to reintroduce necessary restraint into union behaviour and tame inflation.
For those old enough to remember the 80s my best analogy for an industrial wrecking ball on Theresa May’s scale would have to be Arthur Scargill whose confrontational term as mineworkers leader saw the brutal decimation of the coal industry.
This is not an observation on the merits or demerits of Brexit. It is a cry of despair at the utter indifference of a British Prime Minister for the vital, complex and interdependent system of wealth creation that feeds and serves customers, provides lasting and fulfilling jobs, and pays pensions.