Here is a question. Can anyone think of anything in common between Asil Nadir and about half the voting population of Britain? For those of you who have forgotten. Nadir— a particularly apposite name considering what happened to him—was once a man who convinced a lot of people that capitalism does not have to work in the way in which it naturally, inexorably does work. He was what is known as a tycoon, who devoted a lot of this time to developing a business conglomerate called Polly Peck. This was such a profitable company that it was often mentioned as evidence that there is really no need for the economic cycle of boom and slump. There is no need for any business ever to be anything but profitable, no need for it ever to make a loss or go out of existence. All that is necessary to have at the head someone like Asil Nadir, who will ensure that the enterprise will be endlessly profitable. The City loved it. They loved Asil Nadir. They rushed to invest in his business empire.
For his part Asil Nadir loved the City and he must have pleased many of his admirers there, when he gave £400,000 to the Conservative Party, presumably in the hope that the money would help the Tories to foster this mutually attractive and remunerative relationship. However this cosy set-up began to look less comfortable when Asil Nadir’s methods came under the detailed scrutiny of the Serious Fraud Office. Not to put too fine a point on it, the glamorous tycoon was suspected of running a highly unstable operation, which was not improved by his alleged tendency to help himself from the till. The investors in Polly Peck were rudely awakened from their dream of an eternally prosperous capitalism by the reality of losing hundreds of millions of pounds in the company’s collapse.
Jumping bail
Facing trial on 13 charges of fraud and false accounting, Asil Nadir decided that he could no longer rely on a little help from his friends, whether in the City or the Tory Party. Discretion, he decided, was the better part of valour and he jumped bail, fleeing to Northern Cyprus to make sympathetic noises at the news that his former aide in Polly Peck, Elizabeth Forsyth, had collected a five-year prison sentence for helping to launder some of the money Nadir was said to have stolen.
Let us leave, for the moment, the disgraced and hunted tycoon in his Mediterranean hideaway and consider the other part of our question—the half of the voting population in Britain. We refer to the millions of people who support the Labour Party whose vote at elections, give or take a bit, usually amounts to about half of those cast. Now these people are not business tycoons, they are not popular in the City and they don't have readily available hideaways in the sun. If they appear in court it is not for helping themselves to large sums of somebody else's money but normally for shoplifting or burglary or stealing a mobile phone from a parked car.
These people can’t give hundreds of thousands of pounds away because after they’ve paid the rent or the mortgage and the cost of gas and water and electricity and they've bought some clothes and food there is very little left. They pass their lives in poverty, on the knife-edge of destitution so that if something disastrous happens, like losing their job or getting chronically sick, they slip down into a kind of sub-existence where malnutrition and fear are such everyday features of their lives that they become almost inured to them.
Coping with poverty
But this is achieved at considerable cost. The Observer, in a recent article about food and poverty, quoted parents who are struggling to survive, and to protect their children, on Income Support: ”. . . I don’t eat . . . I've walked about with holes in my shoes, no winter coat and haven’t eaten for three days to look after them . . . I won’t let my kids go without." A recent government survey found that among the unemployed 20 percent of men and 38 percent of women had suffered a neurotic disorder. And for those who are in work stress is still a potent factor, not least because of their fear of losing their job.
So let us return, now that we know who we’re talking about, to our original question about what is common to Asil Nadir and the Labour voters of Britain. Well Nadir has recently informed the world that while he does not regret giving all that money to the Tories ("I never regret anything that I have done in my life") he is no longer among their supporters. "No government is in power for ever," he says. "Thank God there is a certain amount of democratic election and we know the elections are approaching. I hope the British public will give their view of what they think of the British Government.” In fact, if the Labour Party win the next election. Nadir says, he will return to Britain (although it is not clear whether this is intended to attract support for Labour or drive it away).
The point about this is that both Asil Nadir the opulent wheeler-and-dealer and the stressed and exploited Labour voters are agreed that a different government here will bring some significant changes to capitalism in Britain.
Labour wheezes
Now this is very unkind to Tony Blair and all his spin doctors and hangers-on who are labouring night and day to convince us that a Labour government will be so similar to the Conservatives that we may hardly notice there has been an election. Gordon Brown will sit in the Treasury searching for new ways to disappoint his supporter's expectations by slashing government spending. His latest wheeze—to abolish Child Benefit for those aged between 16 and 19—has provoked even Peter Lilley to a kind of protest, describing Brown’s proposal as “. . . deeply unpopular in the country . . . a pernicious tax on learning". Jack Straw will occupy the Home Office and try to outdo Michael Howard’s reputation for bashing criminals, perhaps creating a new offence of washing someone's windscreen at traffic lights when they haven’t asked you to. Tony Blair will be in Number Ten thinking up new phrases like stakeholding society to convince us that it isn’t happening and if we are sure that it is then it’s not what we think it is.
So that’s what they have in common— misconceptions about what Labour will rule capitalism means. Of course there are differences between Asil Nadir and Labour voters. He has reason to think he may benefit from a Labour government. They may also think like that but have no reason to.
Ivan
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