Backlash after Lord Sugar gets business job from Cameron
APPRENTICE boss Alan Sugar was yesterday branded totally unsuitable for his new role as the Government’s enterprise tsar.
Amid an astonishing backlash, critics were scratching their heads over David Cameron’s appointment of the reality TV star with a reputation for bullying and hotheadedness.
Flushed with excitement about his new job, Lord Sugar – famous for his exclamation “You’re fired” on the Apprentice TV show – went on Newsnight to pontificate about the European Union debate.
He said leaving the EU would lead to a “disaster” for the UK, adding: “We have to stay in. I don’t know what these Brexit people are thinking.”
Last night Ukip employment spokeswoman Jane Collins said: “A former Labour peer and a Remain campaigner, Lord Sugar is lucky he is not trying to set up a business in this age of excessive EU regulation.
“In fact, for Sugar and his fellow multi-millionaires with international corporate interests, the EU does a great job.
“They keep competitors out of the market through sky-high barriers to entry, keep wages at rock bottom through mass migration subsidised by the taxpayer and keep prices high by stopping the market from being competitive.” Twitter was awash with sceptics yesterday about his surprise appointment too.
One wrote: “Lord Sugar, you are fired. As you have moved through life, and positions, you have lost the plot.”
US presidential hopeful Donald Trump has described Lord Sugar as a “small-timer” and joked he made more money from TV appearances than business.
Lord Sugar’s bombastic manner belies a man riddled with insecurities.
Offensive
Prickly and thin-skinned, he once went on the offensive when described as a “short, stocky 5ft 6in midget” and proclaimed his official height to be 5ft 8in.
He was a member of the Labour Party until last year when he flounced off, denouncing the party’s lurch to the Left. He is now a crossbench peer.
And he criticised the Prime Minister just before the 2015 election when he posted on Twitter: “Hollow promises and false claims from Cameron.”
His spats with Mr Cameron date back to 2008. While he was Leader of the Opposition, Mr Cameron told a journalist: “I can’t bear Alan Sugar.” Lord Sugar hit back: “I’m glad he can’t bear me. Perhaps he will stop asking people to sound me out if I want to meet him and defect to his party.”
Now the 69-year-old former deal maker has agreed to embark on a series of roadshows in England to talk to school leavers and businesses.
The billionaire maker of Amstrad computers, who found fame by sacking his would-be apprentices on the BBC show, worked his way up from selling TV aerials.
He introduced the Amstrad personal computer in the mid-Eighties but the company foundered through lack of technical development.
It eventually discovered a niche manufacturing set-top boxes for BSkyB before being sold in 2007.
Daily Express owner Richard Desmond has described Lord Sugar as a Sid James lookalike who can be “colourful, difficult and not the easiest of guys to work with”.
Mr Desmond, one of Britain’s most successful media moguls, added: “While he thinks he is a marketeer, he’s not.
“What he’s good at is simplifying electronics.”