The UK Transport
Secretary got herself into a
little bit of trouble over the weekend. As far as I can see, her sin was to
repeat in government what she – to say nothing of her party leader – had been
saying whilst in opposition, somehow forgetting that the whole point of being
in government is to do the opposite of what they said in opposition. The ultimate
owner of P&O threw a brief wobbly, threatening not to invest its £1 billion
in the UK unless Starmer did a bit of grovelling, and he duly obliged.
To the enormous
surprise of almost nobody, the company then decided that making the substantial
profit which they expect to earn on their investment was more important to them
than some very slightly hurt feelings and agreed to go ahead with the
investment after all. Some important lessons have been learned, though. The
first is that politicians may huff and puff when companies treat their staff in
an appalling way, but they won’t bite, and there will be no repercussions for
such behaviour. Short term huffing and puffing headlines are an end in
themselves. The second is that the interests of capital will always prevail
over those of labour, even under a self-styled ‘Labour’ government. Humiliating
Starmer into buckling down and acknowledging that publicly is just a bonus, to
say nothing of a marker for what we should expect over the next five years.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment