Malcolm Robertson
In early 1997, in a febrile and noisy House of Commons, the Liberal Democrat MP, Simon Hughes, was struggling to make himself heard.
The speaker of the House of Commons, the late Betty Boothroyd, the first woman to preside over the House, got to her feet and – suggesting that the honourable gentleman’s hope for silence was a forlorn one – implored him to: “produce your voice, Mr Hughes”.
I was reminded of this sharp exchange when thinking about how business lobby groups might more effectively engage with politics and better make the case for hard work, enterprise and profit as enablers of the growth and prosperity badly needed in all parts of society.
Whatever happens in this round of May elections, business must stop being so deferential to politicians who take the private sector – and its contribution to society and the economy – for granted. I respectfully ask: what exactly do you get in return for your polite and gentle words of challenge?
After every significant fiscal or policy event, such as budgets and legislative programmes, business groups tend to meekly thank politicians for the tiny crumbs thrown at them from the enormous public sector table and ask for a little more.
There are exceptions of course but in doing so, much of the language they use is often dry, technical and inaccessible – they talk of “downward changes in employer sentiment” or declare that their members are “experiencing high cost pressures”.
In Scotland, there is endless talk of a £5bn “black hole” in the country’s finances (there is one) and complaints from businesspeople about rateable values, relief and bands and businesses being forced to endure millions and millions of pounds of additional costs.
These are all reasonable arguments to make but, in these unexciting terms, they speak to a tiny fraction of the world outside business and politics, who hear of eyewatering sums of money every day, all wrapped up in business jargon that means little or nothing to them, spoken by people they don’t recognise.
Instead, we must illustrate the direct and obvious connection between the lives of people up and down the country and a detached political establishment that is relentlessly taxing your small business, your employer, your job, your restaurants, your pubs, your cars, your fuel and your holidays, all to pay for their inability to take difficult decisions to STOP spending and wasting money and try instead to raise some.
In the early days of the National Lottery, tabloids explained to their readers how the first winners might spend their new fortune.
Colourful stories were presented and brought to life in simple terms that normal people could visualise and understand: ‘Ten Ferraris, 100 Rolex watches, 200 Louis Vuitton suitcases’. You get the picture, because the newspapers gave you one.
Today, too many institutions and spokespeople rely on dusty old narratives that don’t begin to cut through in today’s cluttered media. For example, the term ‘business rates’ is a cynical piece of spin that should be seen for what it is – it’s little more than a tax on employers of people, of those who work for them and a tax on going to the pub or out for a meal or on a holiday. It makes many of the things you enjoy, that give you comfort during difficult times, more expensive or out of reach.
It is surely time for business groups to reimagine the way they engage with politics and who speaks on their behalf. To do otherwise gives politicians a licence to keep ignoring you or at best to express annoyance the next time you’re in Whitehall or Holyrood for a cosy chat about the dire consequences of whatever act of self-harm the government is planning at that moment.
Privately, many business owners are seething not just at the lack of an economic vision from politicians but at a succession of anti-growth policy interventions from a political class that talks blithely about economic growth yet apparently believes it happens by magic or that the money they waste grows on trees, so there will always be more.
In recent years, the profile of business and businesses has diminished – a changing media landscape has pushed it to the margins of news coverage that is disproportionately focused on politics.
Day in, day out, politicians and political journalists have a big conversation among themselves, often revolving around an issue or issues about which nobody beyond those worlds gives two hoots.
When even the BBC’s flagship morning news programme chooses to pay scant regard to business stories, it is left to business to tell its own story, and it has the means to do it differently and assertively, and with creativity.
My message is simple really: stop thanking politicians for wrecking your business, threatening the jobs of your employees and customers (their voters) and taxing the things they enjoy the most in difficult times – going to the pub, going to a restaurant, taking a holiday. Make the arguments through the voices of your frontline employees and customers – give people somebody that looks like them and talks like them.
In short, as the great Betty Boothroyd said, produce your voice.