Being preached at by this lot fills me with despair

SPARE ME A SERMON FROM THIS OVERPAID, SELF-SERVING COTERIE

The speed with which Tory Pr whizz Baroness rock assembled a list of 197 business people to fall in behind David Cameron’s ‘ remain in the eU’ campaign may look, at first blush, like a masterstroke. But closer examination of a roll call which includes dozens of executives from overseas, luminaries who have received or are chasing government honours, overpaid investment bankers, as well as a man dubbed the ‘Businessman who sold Britain’, can only fill one with despair.

This group might like to regard themselves as the cream of the fTSe100 and the corporate elite, but they are as divorced from the lives of ordinary workers as it is possible to be.

The average income of ordinary employees in Britain has only just caught up with levels achieved before the financial crisis hit in 2007-09. The panjandrums in Britain’s boardrooms have demonstrated no such restraint, and research shows that pay, bonuses and rewards among the most senior directors has reached an all-time high of 150 times that of the average worker.

Yet these very same pampered and overpaid executives seem to think they have the moral right to speak out in favour of staying in the european Union when it is the employees, customers, suppliers and shareholders who must in the end decide at the referendum ballot box — and then live with the legacy of that decision.

The threat made to workers, that jobs might be in danger if they dare to vote out, is scaremongering on a grand scale from bosses who hold the lives of more than 1.2 million workers in their hands.

Wouldn’t it have been far more sensible if the company chieftains had followed the lead of Tesco, Barclays and others and insisted it is up to their own huge workforces and millions of customers to make up their own minds?

What can be seen in this list is the discreet power of the establishment public relations machine that seeks to frame and manipulate opinion in Britain.

Kate rock, the Tory peer behind the letter, is a former Pr guru, having spent 12 years at City firm College hill. also included among the signatories are the City’s two dominant public relations chiefs, Sir alan Parker of Brunswick and roland rudd of finsbury, who have successfully exported their brands across the atlantic.

The fingerprints of these two financial guns-for-hire can be seen all over the list of names attached to the letter, which includes their most prestigious clients plus old personal friends, such as Lady (ruth) rogers of the famed river Café restaurant in West London.

one of the aspects of the list most insulting to the ordinary people of Briton is the large number of overseas executives who think they have a right to tell people in Britain how best to vote in a referendum that will have such a profound effect on the nation’s future.

It is only proper that good British companies attract the best executives to run their affairs — and if that means they are from overseas then so be it.

after all, our wealth has been created on the strength of Britain’s openness to trade and investment from around the world.

We must, however, question whether the Dutch chief executive of Shell, Ben Van Beurden, who lives in the rotterdam suburbs, Ivorian Tidjane Thiam, who runs Credit Suisse from Geneva, or Goldman Sachs’s South african London-based chief executive richard Gnodde, have the right to interfere in our domestic politics. Certainly, their home nations would not welcome overseas meddling.

The soon-to-retire Dutch boss of marks & Spencer, marc Bolland, signed the letter, too. remarkably, Britain’s most emblematic retailer says he did so in a personal capacity, not on behalf of the company.

among the names on the list that have the least right to speak out in favour of Britain remaining in the european Union are those who have been instrumental in sacrificing our industrial heritage.

as a young executive, Sir nigel rudd built his own manufacturing powerhouse, Williams holdings. But in recent years, as a nonexecutive chairman, he has taken a delight in selling off some of the most iconic companies in Britain to foreigners.

The sales spree of the ‘Businessman who sold Britain’ began with St helens-based glassmaker Pilkington — operating since 1826 — which was sold to nippon Sheet Glass of Japan for £1.8 billion in 2006.

a year later, rudd was responsible for the sale of alliance Boots, owner of Boots the Chemist, for £12 billion. That company has now ended up as an offshoot of the american giant Walgreen. Latterly, Sir nigel was involved in the sale of Invensys, a maker of railway signalling in Britain since 1856, to the German industrial giant Siemens.

each of these sales has significantly denuded Britain’s control over its own commercial future, led to the closure of corporate headquarters in this country and, in the case of Boots, undermined the UK’s corporation tax revenues.

rudd’s former colleague at Williams holdings, Sir roger Carr, is another signatory to the letter.

having been chairman of Cadbury, when it was disastrously sold to the american giant Kraft, he has now become a great advocate of keeping British companies British, and looks to the wider world for trading partners to secure the future of Bae (formerly British aerospace), which he now chairs.

It is a huge surprise, therefore — given that 40 per cent of Bae’s business is handled via the Pentagon in america, and 20 per cent with Saudi arabia — that he felt the need to be so enthusiastic about staying in the eU, at a time when Bae is battling it out with the french to secure new markets for fighter planes in faraway countries such as India.

It is interesting to note he once headed the Confederation of British Industry — which benefits greatly from Brussels’ largesse.

among the rest of the list is a motley bunch of Tory supporters and Cameron cronies who have chosen to fall into line.

What is most unconscionable about the behaviour of the fTSe chiefs and the rest is that through their forceful intervention, they are seeking to steamroller the electorate into a remain vote long before the official referendum campaign has begun, or arguments have been properly marshalled.

Whether the millions of voters will appreciate the hectoring tactics of this government-orchestrated campaign remains to be seen.