Sun is setting on my honeymoon with the Coalition
Like many people, I was all aquiver with excitement that new things really were going to happen for the country, and British business in particular, with the radically different Coalition. Inevitably, the honeymoon period is now definitely waning.
Jan Cavelle's honeymoon
with the Coalition is over
I found myself surrounded by Business Link staff at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast recently. To my surprise, despite their impending demise, they all agreed – pretty complacently – that while they didn’t know what their moniker would be, they would still be around if we, the assorted business people present, had any need of them.
Officially, Mark Prisk axed them as predicted this week. Equally predictably, most people apparently don’t care very much. Like the bods of Business Link themselves, they too are convinced that these changes will make little difference in terms of faces or services and that the new LEPs will be about as radically different as brandy butter with Christmas pudding.
Far more surprising to me was the second wave of cuts – a terminal attack on the funding of poor Enterprise UK. We all saw and heard the incredible things being done by these inspirational partnerships forged all over Britain, kick-starting enterprise. It seems incredible to me that this brainchild of august British organisations, including the IoD and CBI, is to be kicked out of home at a mere six years old. All the more so considering it is actually performing.
I am starting to smell political rats. Cuts for the sake of the word, renamings and regroupings for the sake of political points. I had really believed we were in for a new approach. I had almost steeled myself for even tougher times at the start of this year (thanks to the murderous VAT hike), just to be supportive.
Now, though, hardly a day goes by without Vince Cable or George Osborne bouncing up and down with some new revelation. Sadly, I have yet to receive my long-promised copy of Julian Huppert’s Enterprise Charter. Maybe that will reveal more promising things.
All of a sudden, everything is sounding a great deal less like ideology and a great deal more like politics. How depressing. It clearly doesn’t take very long in power. One thing I do still think they are all right about though is that it is going to be down to us as business leaders, not themselves as politicians, to get this country back on its feet again.
Picture: source