Make Britain rich again

This is Iain Martin’s weekly newsletter, exclusively for Reaction subscribers

There is no full newsletter this week. It’s a bank holiday weekend and there are other issues (see bottom item).

But before I go, to see old friends gathering for a glorious wedding in the Scottish borders, a couple of quick thoughts.

Britain needs to get richer again. I know what the response will be from those of you who voted not to leave the European Union. We should have thought of this when voting for Brexit.

Many of us who voted to leave did so knowing it would make the country a little poorer relatively, and accepting the short term trade off involved in return for greater national autonomy, in the hope it would be reinvigorating in the longer term. Without anyone (Brussels) to blame, we would be thrown back on finding solutions to our own problems. It hasn’t happened yet.

Even if Brexit has delivered a meaningful hit by the erection of trade barriers, it is now a fact of life and can’t be an excuse for ever. At some point we’re  going to have to get on with finding ways to boost investment, improve productivity and grow, because without growth life is going to be one long argument over ever more scarce resources.  

Almost every domestic story on the news bulletins every day is now a manifestation of a flatlining country not generating enough money to go round. This week there were national rows about NHS dentistry, teachers strikes, nurses strikes, rail strikes, inflation, and so on, and so on.

In this context the government made a sensible decision this week which was obviously related to trying to boost investment. They are not going ahead with the full programme to remove 4,000 EU retained laws still in place after Brexit. The bill, designed to appeal to Brexit purists, was highly reckless. Businesses complained it would create yet more uncertainty about Britain as an investment location, after years of confusion and drift.

There were howls from some Brexiteers. Yet surely they can see that, after so much has proven to be more difficult with Brexit than promised, we are long past the point when most sensible people will have any faith left in hardliners saying “scrap it all, it’ll be okay if you just believe hard enough”. What could possibly go wrong? A lot.

Instead, the government will remodel 800 laws. Business is pleased. As Brexiteer David Davis has put it a while ago, the point of Brexit was to return control to the UK and its parliament. If it takes decades to go through all EU law and decide what is useful to keep and what can be changed, scrapped or improved, then that is fine.

The reality-based decision by ministers this week was an encouraging sign that investment and growth is starting to get the attention it deserves. It’s no more than a start, though.

There is also the much-vaunted focus on science and technology too, although Whitehall does not seem to have grasped yet how enormous the threat is from the US, where the Biden administration is subsidising its green industries. The might of American capital markets will hoover investment out of Europe, including the UK. Neither the EU nor the UK can match America on a mission.

Labour hasn’t quite got its making Britain richer agenda fleshed out yet either.

This needs to become the national battleground. Margaret Thatcher used to say Britain needed to bake a bigger cake rather than just squabbling over the crumbs. That was right then, and right again now.

Of course Sharp had to quit the Beeb

The chairman of the BBC made a not so sharp exit from his post this week. It took months for the former Goldman player to realise that he was done for. His supporters hoped he could survive the publication of the report into his appointment, and the way in which his informal role relating to Boris Johnson’s finances created a problem.

It was obvious he would have to resign for one very simple reason related to the brute realities of politics.

Once Labour decided he had to go his position was unsustainable. Although the chairman of the BBC was appointed under the Tories, the election is looming and Labour might win. Public institutions are in the zone where they have to keep a potential change of government in mind. Perhaps the Tories will turn it around and win, perhaps they won’t.

The Beeb management and governors have to operate on the basis Labour will win. It could not have a situation in which the BBC chairman had been denounced by Sir Keir Starmer and then Starmer turns up as PM. So off goes Sharp, thrown overboard with only slightly more finesse than a Goldman Sachs partner or ruthless, restructuring City type being told the boot is on the other foot and it’s time to look for opportunities outside the firm.

American naked dining

Would you go to dinner naked with strangers? That was the question posed on the BBC website this week. The commentator John Rentoul used to run a series called QTWAIN – or “questions to which the answer is no.” This is one of those questions.

For some dollars, New Yorkers can pay to attend a dinner party completely naked and eat vegan food, the Beeb reported. This way diners will, the company putting on the events claims, find their authentic selves. That’s one name for it.

I stumbled on this story reading the BBC app, while looking for a report on the resignation of Richard Sharp. Honestly.

The naked dining story on the BBC news app did jar a little. Here was a contrast with all the high-minded stuff from Beeb people saying the Sharp business had undermined the inherent dignity of such an august and high-minded organisation.

Keep on moving

The main reason this is a truncated newsletter? We moved house this week. I say we, but management did all the work while I stood around looking at our much-loved possessions – books, music, pictures, guitars, cats –  being carted away to storage.

Off we go to the seaside (Hove) for the summer.

More newsletter next weekend, pre-Coronation.

Have a good weekend.

Iain Martin,

Publisher and CEO,