Fixing Britain: The Business of Reshaping Our Nation [Hardcover]

Having had the privilege of hearing Digby Jones speak several times, I was most interested to read this book.

At long last, we have been given a TRUE picture of the situation within the United Kingdom over the last 30 years or so.

Lord Jones is absolutely correct in his apraisal of the dire state of affairs in our Country and has put in to writing what we have all known (or suspected) but been loth to admit.

Just as empires have been judged to have crumbled under the weight of their own contradictions, so too this memoir/manifesto from the enigmatic Lord Digby Jones leaves you wondering how it all came to this.

Even the starting point (and conclusion) where the bombastic Brummie professes to love his country, then likens it to Ancient Rome (just before it collapsed), he puts a familiar marker down with the pomposity and grandstanding that took him to the top of the CBI and into Gordon Brown's Government of all the Talents. I say all of that as someone who admired him as the Voice for Business. He always delivered a good speech. He clearly worked ferociously hard at the helm of the UK's most influential business organisation, touring the country and talking to businesses. But just as you always wonder if a good campaigning politician could effectively lead a great department of state, so you found yourself wondering where all of this tub thumping would take dear Digby.

During his time at the CBI, he boasts in the book, he was the most visible leader that the business organisation had ever had. He was also taken inside Tony Blair's big tent and listened to. He had the ear of government.

He was asked round for chats at Number 10 and was frequently consulted on policy. Politically, he skilfully sidestepped the issue of the Euro, pandering to his bigger members by not following the weight of business sentiments which was against entry to the single currency. And during a period of economic growth, business enjoyed a good run. And yet for all of that access, for all of the massive strides that Labour made to be seen as business friendly - a Labour government, a Labour government (as he paraphrases Neil Kinnock) introducing a 10 per cent rate for Capital Gains Tax - by his own judgement, by his own standards and analysis of where we are now, it must have been a era of failure. He charts all the tactical defeats in the book without a hint of self-deprecation; the implementation of EU regulations on working time, the hike in National Insurance in 2004, the climate change levy. And culturally, he moans that business people are always portrayed as the bad guy in soaps and that journalists don't understand where wealth comes from.

So, you ask this question, why did this happen on your watch, Digby?

As he stepped into a new career as a minister he is frustrated from day one by the stifling civil service culture. He cites, but doesn't name, a thrilled woman minister accepting the trappings of office for the first time. He turns his back on all of that though and gets on with the job of "promoting Britain". But at what? I dare say he shakes a lot of hands, refuses to make apologies to imperial crimes, makes a lot of speeches, but more than that he doesn't really say - apart from accepting without a crumb of modesty that he "played a blinder" on a number of occasions.

So what is to be done about the broken Britain that needs fixing? To be fair, politically, if you take the book as a series of stances to take on a number of issues, there's little anyone who runs a business and who cares about Britain could disagree with him on. He's fairly centrist and fair minded, he articulates very well the distressing culture of worklessness, indolence and welfare dependency. His is the politics of the common sense voice of reason. But he also goes further and isolates the importance of education in an age of globalisation. So far so good. But this is supposed to be a serious figure from public life, one of the most influential of the last 15 years. And while this isn't a policy document, it is frighteningly light on detail or evidence, all the more surprising as a former lawyer, lobbyist and minister. It's just anecdote after story. Personal confrontations where he always has the last word and the best line.

He dreams up initiatives - like compulsory training - that will have to be enshrined in laws and delivered by reluctant civil servants. More red tape, tut tut.

He urges the Great British Public to embrace public life, but deliberately doesn't endorse the Big Society, because he's apolitical, see.

In a recent BBC interview Digby oozed charm and self-promoted his own achievements. He is an ordinary bloke from the Midlands, he says, who has voted for every party. This is just him batting for business, his constituency. His country. Using short sentences. Like this.

But just as he swerved the Euro issue, so too he has surprisingly little to say on the financial crisis of 2008, just a plea to leave the bankers alone. Has Britain's banking sector failed his constituency? The hard working, honest, red tape snarled, beleaguered and unloved British entrepreneur. Where is his railing against the monopolistic abuses of power of big retail and their destructive effect on the high street and on their supply chains?

This book ultimately reads well enough. Pugnacious and passionate; a little bit "Richard Littlejohn" in its saloon bar polemics. But it's also strangely close to the consensual politics the coalition agreement represents. Sadder though, it reads like a wall of unappreciated noise from a man with plenty to say, but nothing left to do.

The subjects he raises are at the heart of what kind of country Britain should be. The conclusions he draws are largely correct. But they're also not far off what the inclusive coalition agreement mapped out. I feel slightly mean spirited raising a critical word, as his is a voice in the political wilderness, a man who embraced coalition politics for the good of the country before the coalition government, explaining that although he was ennobled, he made big financial sacrifices as he did so. It's placed him, for now, outside of the corridors of power and influence. But the only person who can explain how that has happened is Lord Digby Jones of Birmingham himself, the one person least able, and least likely, to do so.

Digby-Jones is the John Prescott of the right. Bombastic, blustering, and charismatic but more a dogmatic rabble-rouser than a clear thinker.

The book starts by successfully identifying the fact that the UK has in business terms, especially manufacturing, suffered disastrously over the last 3 decades. During this period, Britain has shamelessly flogged off many of its successful businesses to foreign ownership with mixed success and never hesitated to close down factories in pursuit of a cleaner, brighter and elusive `post-industrialised' economy. Hence our present over-reliance on (propping up) the financial services industry. Our competitor nations have during this same period taken a very different approach nurturing and growing their strategic industries.
The problem is that many of the so called `solutions' put forward by Digby-Jones are simply warmed up Thatcherite orthodoxies (in turn rooted in the now widely discredited Chicago School economics), perpetuated under Tony Blair to whom the author was a key adviser.

Jones continues to preach the tired policies of naked free market economics that have long been applied in practice as policy by UK governments of all hues. As we survey the present desolate industrial landscape around us, it would seem highly unlikely that the most effective solution is more of the same medicine.

Despite parading his pro-British credentials, Digby-Jones is a great believer in the City-inspired obsession that `ownership doesn't matter' - which is one reason why we have so very few remaining `national champions' - having lost so many former blue chip giants such as ICI, GEC, Marconi, Hawker Siddely, Lucas, Rowntrees etc etc. According to Rita Clifton head of Interbrand, there are now only 2 British brands in the world Top 100.

Unfortunately Jones preaches the same tired `macho' free market doctrine - that is to say, the belief that a stronger long-term economy is achieved by allowing weaker or temporarily troubled firms to go to the wall - the obvious exception being the banking `industry' which must be bailed out at any cost. The obvious flaw in this doctrine applied so rigorously for so long by UK governments is that as a result (with a few honourable exceptions) Britain no longer makes anything or owns anything.
The other obvious flaw is that all other (successful) free market competitor nations such as USA, France, Italy, Germany etc have adopted coherent industrial policies designed to retain and support their national champions, as key pillars of their economies.
Even under `red in tooth & claw' US capitalism we see that when giant corporations such as GM and GE are in trouble, they are bailed out by taxpayers - both GM and GE having now returned to rude health. In Britain all we can manage to keep our spirits up from our desolate High Streets is to mock the French for supporting and thereby saving their industries, many of which are now fit enough to expand worldwide.

Put simply, Jones adopts a selective view where the free market is encouraged for `wealth creating' bankers, but only to the extent of unlimited pay and bonuses. He fails to notice that all UK banks effectively operate under a rigged market subsidised by massive ongoing government support allowing them to borrow at artificially low rates, permitting huge profits on otherwise unviable lending/gambling activities.
Similarly the big 4 firms of Auditors are officially acknowledged to be operating a hugely profitable cartel where free market competition is openly stifled. But for the rest of us, Jones applauds unlimited job competition via mass migration into overcrowded Britain, undercutting wages and doing away with the need for firms to invest in training and apprenticeships for UK citizens, thereby boosting short-term profits. One rule for the rich.

In reality the causes of our nation's industrial failure are manifold, and Jones is right to point to poor quality education as an issue where even graduates are poor at numeracy & literacy.

But let's also consider the political dimension where both main parties were keen to distance themselves from British industry with its uncomfortable echoes of 1970s `old Labour', industrial unrest and conflict. Far better to rely on `clean' & futuristic service industries and global financial services.

Unfortunately, the result of the `Big Bang' - kicking away national barriers has been US and other foreign firms sweeping in and taking over whilst unfit UK firms have failed dismally to expand overseas, as confidently predicted as justification for such reforms.

As Will Hutton pointed out many years ago, the City has prospered hugely on the back of M&A activity, breaking up and flogging off UK companies. The most recent example being the obscene fees paid to hedge funds and consultants for handing Cadburys over to US conglomerate Kraft. Cadbury directors such as Roger Carr pocketed an incredible £40m apiece for their failure to successfully defend this British icon with which they were entrusted. It's no secret that within the next few years Kraft will have closed down Cadbury's UK factories and moved abroad (having already dodged UK taxes by moving HQ to Switzerland).

The reason why the author is simply not a credible commentator is that the mess we find ourselves in now is the result of Digby-Jones style policies that have been implemented over the last 30 years. In short this has resulted in a total lack of economic patriotism in government and business - something Lord Sugar frequently points out to deaf ears.

Rather than support our remaining manufacturers, government takes the lazy option of encouraging international `investment' in Britain, by setting company takeover criteria as amongst the most lax in the developed world. As a result, Britain now has to line up with all the other begging bowl nations to offer low tax and generous grants to bribe the likes of America's GE or Germany's Siemens or France's Alsthom to run factories and create UK employment. The fact is, we no longer own our future.

Perhaps the biggest irony of Jones' book is that he is in a perfect position to see the real solution to our industrial problems, having somehow wangled a PR role on behalf of reborn Triumph Motorcyles - one of Britain's few (only?) major industrial success stories. Triumph is now a major world force in bike manufacturing, having been started from nothing 20 years ago by the wonderful John Bloor. This success was achieved against all odds, by a determined, intelligent individual with the drive and passion to make things happen. It is no co-incidence that Triumph is a private firm not subject to the short-term asset-stripping mentality of City spivs & speculators, and could therefore adopt a long-term, product-focused approach. Key to future success is as Will Hutton states, is to "organize our companies so they can take a more rounded view of their business than just the immediate share price". Triumph is the template for future industrial success - if we have the balls as a nation to make it happen.

P.S. If the above comments chime with any readers, post a reply - we need to do something soon to rebuild our great industries. from little acorns mighty oaks do grow - start a new movement, anyone?