Knee-Jerk Politics Is No Solution To Anything

“I read the news today, oh boy”… and what continues to baffle me is how people seem to think there’s an instant solution to everything. There rarely is. The media fuel the idea that there is, career journalists love it, and they target specific topics and specific individuals to give the impression there’s a quick fix for everything. Many of them want to be seen to follow a public mood, a political agenda, or simply to create a legacy for themselves. They know full well that most people only read headlines, therefore cheap shots predominate: “Starmer must go”. “Amorim must go”. “Mandleson’s gone”, again. And the alternatives are?

There are many things I find distasteful about the way the current UK government is performing, but after a lifetime in international business I also know for certain that anything good takes at least two years to achieve. A government that has been in power for just over a year can’t possibly solve the myriad problems inherited from the previous 14 years of appalling Tory government. Labour call it “steadying the ship”, but while this particular ship is being steadied, it’s also being battered by multiple tsunamis, some self-inflicted. So I have empathy for the (still new) government, but little sympathy because their Press Office has been staggeringly incompetent.

And so to the football analogy. I saw some of the live posts for the most recent Manchester derby on BBC Sport. There’s a clamour for manager Ruben Amorim to be removed after less than a year in one of the most difficult, high profile jobs in world football. Had this kind of knee-jerk response been so prevalent between 1986 and 1991 Sir Alex Ferguson, the most decorated manager in football history, would himself have been history. We saw back then how the skills of older players on contracts were being utilised until they were moved on. We saw senior players being moved on unless they towed the line. We saw utility players brought in to help bring on youth players who would be the cornerstone of Ferguson’s strategy. Change takes time. People generally hate change. In that sense, there’s little difference between the ‘then’ and the ‘now’.

We seem to live in a world that constantly clamours for change at a time when change has rarely been so feared. Change has to be right, and with change must come patience, and a level of trust in strategy. So those clamouring for yet another football manager, yet another government or yet another leader, should note that the UK prime ministers who have brought the greatest stability in the last 50 years (love them or loathe them) were the destructive Thatcher (11 years) and the smooth talking Blair (10 years): Callaghan lasted 3 years from 1976; Major 7 years from 1990; Brown 3 years from 2007; Cameron 6 years from 2010; May had 3 stonewalling years from 2016; the miscreant Johnson 3 years from 2019; Truss wallowed in her 45 days in the limelight in 2022; Sunak had an unremarkable 2 years. Apart from Sunak and Truss, every Prime Minister since 1976 has been in power for at least three years (and by the way, every single one of them has had to bend to the will of the US, not least because their business conglomerates largely – directly and indirectly – control our own). This country has seen little evidence of stability in the last decade, so should we not be craving it?

The first question I used to ask each of my UK export clients was always “What’s your five year plan for international trade?” It was my bare minimum timeframe. Some fell off their chairs. Most just thought I was after a long term contract, but I didn’t want to work with businesses that had no vision, or no long term plan. Those who sat up and took notice went on to build solid foundations for their export business…and then some utter cock decided Brexit was a good idea! Brexit wrecked the international business reputation of the vast majority of companies in the UK. It stopped some companies exporting to our geographically closest market. It singularly wrecked the reputation of this country and put us in an appalling negotiating position from which it would seem there are finally a few green shoots of recovery. This, I’m afraid, is shit I know about. International business equals jobs. Brexit, apparently, was “taking back control”. Of what? For whose benefit? We all know the answer to that. New US investment in the UK announced in the last few days, means we are ever more dependent on the US, but being a US bridge to Europe is a better place to be than its sick man.

So for those who want “Starmer Out” or “Labour Out”, from whatever political persuasion you happen to be, this article is my ‘Six Penneth of Perspective’. Reform (as they are so incongruously called, with their open door to the Far Right) now have 5 MPs: no experience, a leaky vetting system, and appoint teenagers to lead councils. They have a leader who, if I were to ever be so deranged as to want to soil my hand by shaking his, would lead me instantly to count my fingers. The Tory party (119 MPs) is undergoing prolonged and embarrassing death throes, and have a leader who frankly would even make a bad head girl. Then we come to the opposition from the left of centre. The Liberal Democrats (72 MPs) have good principles, which is presumably why the media hate them so much and give them such a pitiful profile. The LibDems will never gather the momentum to assume power. The Green Party (4 MPs) have many laudable objectives, and an energetic new leader, but the media hate them even more than they hate the LibDems. Then we have the ‘radical left’ who seem to spend their time dividing left of centre politics, thus wrecking any chance of a sustained government of the left. The media really, really hate them! Ironically, they have policies I’d like to see as part of the mainstream Labour agenda, but I don’t trust extreme left wing politicians as far as I can throw them. I never have done. As with Brexit, you don’t change a club by leaving it. Change takes time, from within or without. Knee-jerk politics never works. Nor does Messiah politics.

Sadly, therefore, for all their faults, the current UK government needs at least those 3 years that have been afforded to most of the Prime Ministers since 1976. Starmer’s biggest problem is that he has singularly failed to get the media onside. It appalls me that the media are the key, but they are. Blair was the last Labour Prime Minister to get them onside, and yes, it meant he had to suck up to forces that are counter to true Labour principles, but it got him ten years. It also got us ten years of the most stable and successful economy of my long lifetime (but don’t even start me on Iraq), and just remember who his Chancellor was for the whole of those ten years. No government ever gets everything right, but that particular Labour government was doing something right before the entire global economy collapsed in 2008. That wasn’t within their control. We haven’t known true stability since.

Meanwhile, the bickering continues and ordinary people continue to suffer. Amorim will probably go before his time, and Kier Starmer before his. I severely doubt he’ll be afforded a second term. The alternatives are too awful to contemplate.

Peace

John