Private Enterprise - is it a Horse, a Cow or a Tiger? Take the Winston Churchill Test...

“Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.”

Winston Churchill

Miliband gives all the indications that he would not know a healthy horse if it hit him. You could argue I would say that wouldn’t I – but here is what 3 former Labour business supporters say:

i). One of Labour party’s biggest business backers when Tony Blair was leader has said he is now “frightened” by the idea of the party winning the general election.

Sir Charles Dunstone, the co-founder of Carphone Warehouse, said business people “feel very detached” from the party and “isolated” by its lurch to the Left under Ed Miliband. Under Tony Blair he was one of the business people who signed a letter supporting Labour.

But he told the Financial Times: “As a business person I’m frightened of an environment where there isn’t sufficient emphasis put on growing the economy to grow tax receipts to spend more." The comments come after Labour has faced repeated criticism from business leaders and former donors for failing to support businesses.

ii). Simon Walker, director-general of the Institute of Directors, says…

“It is not that Ed is pro or anti-business, he is ‘abusiness’ — he doesn’t relate to it or understand its needs, values or concerns.”

iii). Lord Noon, a Labour peer who has given hundreds of thousands of pounds to the party, made his intervention after Ed Balls’ inability this week to recall a business donor’s name onthe BBC’s Newsnight, and Ed Miliband’s failure to raise the deficit in his conference speech last autumn.

In an interview with the Guardian, Noon said: “I cringed when Balls forgot the name of a business backer and Ed forgot whole paragraphs from his conference speech. It is very embarrassing”.

Gulam Noon, who has given nearly £873,000 to the party, £100,000 of that since Miliband became leader, made his fortune from the manufacture of ready meals and is worth an estimated £75m.

The peer even went so far as to suggest on Thursday that Labour’s leader and the shadow chancellor should “eat almonds every day [said to improve brain power] so they remember things when they are interviewed or speak in public.”

SME's & Businesses create the jobs we all need - that must be the message from todays Chamber of Commerce conference - which Ed Miliband did not attend.

50 years on from Churchills death as his 24 January 1965 anniversary approaches

Born in 1874, on the 30 November, Churchill had a parliamentary career spanning sixty-four years. He was a soldier, writer and countryman who excelled at so much. In a political career of highs and massive lows he represented several constituencies, and served under thirteen Prime Ministers, including himself. 

Churchill represented Oldham in 1900-06, briefly in Manchester, and then was MP for Dundee for over fourteen years, before losing both his seat, and his appendix, in the bitter fought election of 1922. He was out of the House of Commons and written off, but returned in 1924; he was adopted as the "Independent Constitutionalist anti-Socialist" candidate for Epping, which effectively remained his constituency for the rest of his political career.
The wartime quotes are well known but I prefer some of the wiser assessments of life and the difficulties he overcome.

"All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honour, duty, mercy, hope."

 And this on business: "Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon."

I have just read Boris Johnson's short biography of Churchill = The Churchill Factor. It is a great read. Make sure you buy it at an independent bookshop, not on Amazon!
Fuller details here: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill

I will vote for the Recall of MPs Bill tonight after listening to todays debate, but not the proposed Goldsmith amendments next week

Today the Commons has been debating the Recall Bill and we will vote on the second reading of the Bill tonight at 7. The Bill then has various committee days in the Commons next week before it goes to the House of Lords for their Lordships to consider the matter over the winter. I tried to speak today but was not able to. So I will try and set out some points here on the blog.

I stood on a manifesto to bring in a Recall Bill in 2010 following the expenses scandal when several MPs were rightly sent to prison. The Coalition Agreement included a commitment to bring forward legislation to introduce a power of recall, and there has been a draft bill and white paper considered and then assessed by a cross party committee under pre legislative scrutiny. The Government identified recall as a means of restoring faith in the political process, by increasing the accountability of Members of Parliament to the electorate between elections. However, it believed that a recall petition should only be triggered following a finding of serious wrongdoing; it should not be triggered for political reasons – perhaps because MPs had voted in a particular way that constituents opposed. The evolution of the Coalition Government's Draft Recall Bill is well set out here: https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/reforming-the-constitution-and-political-system/supporting-pages/recall-of-mps

The actual draft Bill is here: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2014-2015/0094/cbill_2014-20150094_en_1.htm
I have also received a campaign email doing the rounds from 38 Degrees to say that the planned recall proposals do not go far enough; as 38 Degrees often do, they have decided to draft their own Bill. As always, in these matters, the devil is in the detail, and having researched the 38 Degrees Bill and listened to the debate today I am going to support the Coalition Governments Recall Bill tonight and will not be supporting the 38 Degrees version. As always, I will try and explain why.
 
The first issue to sort out is what is recall for? In my view it should be a facility to be used if an MP has behaved badly in ways which damage their work as an MP. I don't think it should be a chance to re-run the election in any given seat, simply because a group of people did not like the result.  

The Bill addresses bad behaviour at clause 2 and looks at criminal offences in particular. Where I disagree most strongly with the 38 Degrees approach is that it encourages recall where an MP makes a decision on a political issue, a matter of conscience, or a local issue with which some constituents do not agree. Many of the examples have been cited in the debate today, whether it is the Iraq War vote in 2003, the same sex marriage vote in 2012, the hunting ban, or issues concerning divorce, abortion or death penalty decisions.  I voted for the same sex marriage bill and then led the campaign against the Coalitions proposed Forestry Bill. Both were highly contentious issues.  

More difficult still is political behaviour. Some constituents think an MP should face recall for breaking his or her word, or reneging on promises made before an election. Tempting though this is, it could prove difficult to enforce and would probably lead to parties and candidates declining to make any promises at all that could later force their resignation. This would be the import of the 38 Degrees / Goldsmith Bill.

Let us take the case of the Lib Dem promise to oppose tuition fees in the 2010 election. It was a clear promise. In the circumstances of the coalition it was subsequently a Lib Dem Secretary of State who then presided over the development and implementation of the tuition fee system. Should there have been 50+ by elections immediately that happened, with a possible change of government and a period of instability? Or is the change of circumstance, a realisation that some promises were unaffordable, given the financial disaster left behind by Labour and Gordon Brown, and the formation of coalition, sufficient reason to change a party’s stance? I, for one, would not support recall in such circumstances, but am certain some would have tried to make it a recall matter under the 38 Degrees / Goldsmith arrangements. The reality is that the Liberals, never having been in government for a century, made a rash promise thinking it would never have to then implement it. None of us also realised how broke the country was going to be after Brown's Boom and Bust. As we have discovered the reality of running a balanced budget is very difficult and very tough decisions have had to be taken. I do not shirk from this, albeit it has been very difficult and not every decision has been got right. But the reckoning in such a case is the General Election, not 57 by elections. 

The issue also arises of what proportion is required to justify recall? The Goldsmith / 38 Degrees proposal seeks only 5% of the electorate as a trigger. I would campaign strongly against such a figure - not least as in a marginal seat there will be at least 40% of the electors who feel very partisan in favour of the main losing candidate. Should they have the right to demand a re-run at the worst time for the incumbent MP? One of the parts of this job I admire most is the fact that we represent everyone, without fear or favour. I have had strong proponents of the BNP - some of whose behaviour was fairly feisty, to say the least, at the last election - come to me seeking my help as their MP: they are treated the same as any Coalition supporter. MPs help all of their constituents, whoever they are. This needs to be maintained.

38 Degrees no longer reply to my emails, or respond to my letters, even though I have gone to great lengths to engage with them, but I will happily set out their amendments to the Coalitions bill here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/38degrees.3cdn.net/5f6fde153d0e49a936_enm6bnzus.pdf
It may be that the Goldsmith / 38 Degrees approach will be carried next week but again this is what a parliamentary debate is about. The Bill will be assessed on several occasions by both Houses of Parliament. That is what parliamentary debate is for.

For the final word do not take my word for it - read the Guardian. The Guardian is not normally na supporter of the Coalition, but is a fairly robust critic of the 38 Degrees / Goldsmith approach: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jun/05/mp-recall-bill-not-meaningless

In his brilliant article Michael White, who cites the Andrew Mitchell MP example very powerfully, makes the wonderful point about the attempt to remove Winston Churchill as an MP in 1938:

"Unfashionable MPs and unpopular causes need to be defended from popular passions of the moment and from majoritarian bullying, orchestrated from tax havens. My favourite example remains Winston Churchill, who faced a campaign to remove him in his Epping constituency in 1938 because he was upsetting Neville Chamberlain's efforts to make lasting peace with Mr Hitler."
As always, on the blog, comments are welcome. But, as usual, I will make the usual point that we in the Commons debate the Bill line by line twice, as does the House of Lords, and that the Bill always evolves with the parliamentary process. Given the Churchill example, and the reasons set out above, I shall be voting for the Coalitions version of the Bill tonight, but not the future amendments.