Why does Britain sell off all its companies?

Here’s a thought. If Emmanuel Macron is re-elected as President of France next month and makes good on his pledge to reduce his country’s dependence on foreign oil and gas, one likely result will be that EDF, which supplies electricity and gas to more than six million customers in the UK, will be owned 100 per cent by the French state. 

Macron, by way of his appointees to the EDF board in Paris, will thus become one of the most important voices in the debate over British energy. Not only does EDF supply one fifth of Britain’s electricity from the eight nuclear plants it already owns, it is building a massive new facility at Hinkley Point, in Somerset, that, along with renewables, in which it is also heavily invested, will be at the cutting edge of power generation in the UK for decades to come. 

No one could reasonably believe that Macron, or his successors as President, will be inclined to intervene day-to-day, or even year-to-year, in the running of EDF in Britain. The French company is already 85 per cent state-owned, and the operation of its UK subsidiary, EDF Energy, is largely left to a board led by its Italian CEO, Simone Rossi. All France wants is the profit. 

But if the situation were reversed, so that a British company with a hefty stake in French energy production was about to be nationalised and would in future answer exclusively to the UK Department of Energy, there would be uproar in Paris. The same would be true in Germany.

The comparison is moot, of course, because there is no such British company, and if there was, the French would not have allowed it in. By contrast, in addition to EDF, four of the Big Six energy corporations in the UK are foreign owned. E.On UK is a subsidiary of the Germany E.On corporation, as is Npower; SSE (formerly Scottish & Southern) has answered to a Swiss Holding Company since 2019; Scottish Power is part of the Spanish multinational Iberdrola; only Centrica remains wholly British-owned, and its leading shareholders are all institutional investors. 

It is the same story when it comes to Britain’s other utilities, including water supply, as well as its main transport links, most obviously the railways. Most are foreign-owned. 

This week saw the dismissal by P&O of all its British crews, which will be replaced by foreign workers recruited at “market” rates. P&O, once a famous brand, known across the world’s oceans as a great British company, has been owned since 2019 by DP World, based in Dubai, whose CEO, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, is closely linked to the ruling Maktoum family. DP World also owns London Gateway (basically the Port of London) and is reportedly in the running to take charge of the various post-Brexit freeports announced last year with much fanfare by Boris Johnson. Should this happen, almost the entire maritime infrastructure of the UK, as well as Heathrow and Gatwick airports, would be foreign owned.

The Channel is the UK’s lifeline to Europe, yet there are currently no British-owned and run ferry companies. P&O share the Dover-Calais route with the Danish company DFDS. Brittany Ferries, of France, and Stena Line of Sweden dominate all other routes to the Continent, while Stena, P&O and Irish Ferries operate the various routes to Ireland. Eurotunnel is owned by Getlink of Paris. The British Government sold off its stake years ago, as it did its stake in Eurostar. 

How is this good for Britain? How is it compatible with Taking Back Control? 

I could go on. The list is endless. The argument is frequently made that ordinary people – which is to say those of us who have never spent time in a boardroom – don’t understand the principles of 21st century corporate ownership. It doesn’t matter, apparently, who owns what. The only thing that matters is efficiency and return on investment, with, ahem, due regard to the customer. 

Very well. But why is it that Britain, almost uniquely, has decided to sell itself off, piece by piece, sector by sector, to foreign owners? Other countries, including France and Germany and the United States – all of them avowedly capitalist – have companies, even large companies, that are owned, or part-owned, by foreign interests. This is normal. You buy some, you sell some. But of the G7 and G20 member states, only Britain has made a speciality of handing over control of its vital interests to others. Why is this? Did it start with Mrs Thatcher, and why has it been allowed to gather pace ever since? 

The Victorians would have been ashamed.  

The point is that if so many of these flagship British companies are seen as a good return on investment, why are British investors not interested in acquiring them? Is it because they can’t be bothered? Do they lack the funds? Or is it possible that they don’t believe, deep down, that ownership of British enterprise is, in the longer term, financially sound? It is not even as if UK money men and women are doing the same thing abroad, taking over German, US and Japanese companies, adding their distinctiveness to ours. When was the last time you read about a multi-billion-pound takeover by British venture capital of a prize overseas concern? You didn’t. We don’t do that anymore. British investment overseas is increasingly piecemeal – 3 per cent here, 5 per cent there – never the volume that would trigger an offer for overall control. City and institutional investors are looking solely for a return to shareholders. They have little interest in building a brand or making the big decisions. They just want the divi. 

So are there no big-name entrepreneurs in Britain anymore? Did they stop with Jim Ratcliffe and James Dyson (both of whom have moved the registration of their companies to foreign locations)? Why, when a big brand comes up for sale, are there hardly ever any British bidders? Why do so many British startups end up in foreign ownership? Why are so many Premier League teams the playthings of oligarchs and Gulf Arab billionaires? Why are most of the biggest property deals in London concluded by super-rich individuals from the Middle East, India and, increasingly, Africa, many of whom made their fortunes by the exploitation of underpaid workers in their own countries? And why – seriously, why? – were Russian oligarchs, most of them with close ties to Vladimir Putin, treated like royalty by the British Establishment?

Does Global Britain mean that the rest of the world should own Britain? 

I have no answers, I only have questions. But if we don’t start looking at Britain as our own country, to be governed and run primarily for the benefit of our 67 million fellow citizens of all classes, colours and creeds, then who are we and what right do we have to lecture others on the virtues of either capitalism or democracy?