How can a politician run London if they’ve never run a business?
Our politicians all agree on the need for economic growth, yet none of them seems to have even worked in the private sector let alone actually run a business. Should we be surprised that growth continues to elude us, asks Alex Challoner.
What do a dance producer, a lecturer in social psychology, a footballer, an employment barrister, a journalist, a special adviser, and two charity workers have in common? No, this is not the opening line of a bad, and rather convoluted, joke. (There would have to be a rabbi – or an Irishman – for that to be the case). What they actually have in common is that they are the former professions of eight of the nine Deputy Mayors of London.
Now, your first reaction to this information will probably be to wonder why Sadiq Khan feels he needs no fewer than nine deputies (each on a salary of up to £151,465 a year) when the Greater London Act only requires him to have one.
Your second observation will probably be to note that these eight individuals do not have much private sector experience. None has run a business. Charity workers, for all their considerable compassion, do not really understand the profit motive. A journalist will not have to reconcile a profit and loss statement. A footballer won’t have ever worried about meeting payroll at the end of the month.
Motley bunch
Only Howard Dawber (who is appropriately the Deputy Mayor for Business) has had an extensive business career. Before he took up his current portfolio at City Hall, he was a senior executive with the Canary Wharf Group. Nobody would doubt his business credentials. But, given London is the engine room of the UK economy, is one Deputy Mayor out of nine with proper business experience really enough?
Of course, the Mayor of London could look beyond his motley bunch of deputies to source business opinion. He has a Business Advisory Board that City Hall claims is made up of ‘top flight business leaders’ but it only meets four times a year and its minutes and papers are not published so we don’t know which City Hall policies are discussed, what views the Board’s members have taken or even how many members even turned up. Like so many of City Hall’s tokenistic task forces (remember the Commission on Diversity in the Public Realm that was wound up after four years having spent £1.7m but without toppling a single allegedly racist statue?) I fear that this Board exists more for PR purposes than to genuinely improve policy making.
As an entrepreneur myself I find the lack of credible business experience around the table where big decisions are made to be desperately dispiriting. Politicians without experience in senior private sector roles – and especially the prevalence of those without any business experience at all – means that policy is being made without any real understanding of its true impact. (And this is sadly as true of the Cabinet as much as City Hall). Far too many basic business principles are abstract concepts to our law-makers. And I am not alone. A survey of FTSE 100 Chairmen found that 89 per cent thought a lack of commercial experience amongst politicians is inhibiting British business. Little wonder that economic growth continues to elude us as a nation when our leaders have no knowledge or experience of what is required to turn a profit within so much as a small business. There are many arguments against the rise of the career politicians, but this must be the most serious.
Alex Challoner is a Director for London Vision Network and a former prospective London Mayoral Candidate for the Conservative party