Why Branson’s Britain’s most patronising swine!
He makes out he’s a caring, sharing groover when he’s a flinty moneyman who grooms his image as carefully as his frightful beard. In a wickedly pugnacious new book, QUENTIN LETTS crowns Richard Branson ...
IN SATURDAY’S extract from Quentin Letts’ new book, he turned his gimlet eye on a new class of smug, condescending, finger-wagging people who never tire of telling us what to do and think. Today, he reveals the worst offender of them all . . .
DO YOU remember the Man from Del Monte, who appeared in the Eighties adverts for a brand of juice and tinned fruit? The commercials would show a farm in some dusty country, with a rich hombre in a white suit arriving to test the fruit while the impecunious locals waited nervously for his verdict.
Eventually, the visitor vouchsafed a curt nod of approval, and up went the exuberant cry: ‘The man from Del Monte. He say yes!’
You wouldn’t get away with that sort of advert these days. Insufficiently egalitarian. So what made rich whitey Sir Richard Branson, bounteous bwana to the world’s little people, think he could get away with a scheme called ‘The Elders’?
It’s the ultimate example of talking down to people — and his part in it makes him
numero uno in my list of the top Patronising Bastards.
Bearded box-wallah Branson makes out he is a caring, sharing guy. He has created for himself an image of laid-back dude, the ordinary guy, your baby-boom groover next door. He portrays himself as such an anguished altruist, open- collared and long-haired, you wonder that he even knows phrases such as ‘ mark- up’ or ‘bottom line’.
In fact, he is a tight-biting businessman who has run his companies with flinty acumen and grabbed a packet for himself. He has an interest in globalised pay rates, international commodity prices and the Western banking system. Please don’t call it exploi- tation, but this is certainly capitalism in the raw.
He is also a remorseless collector of phone numbers of the fashionable and mighty. When it comes to climbing, he is in the clematis league, a name-dropper of the first water, vain, self-important, a prize specimen of that genus Bastardus ( patronisingae).
Branson’s Virgin trains are expensive. They are airless, cramped, have stinking khazis and, like other railway operators, flush away billions of pounds in public subsidies. If any other company ran such a foul service at our expense, we would pelt it with cabbages, but because it is run by Branson, and because Branson has groomed his reputation even more assiduously than he does that frightful beard, Virgin is somehow given a comfortable ride. If only the same could be said for its passengers.
Broadcasters would normally regard the knighted boss of a public- contract transport business with suspicion. A mate of prime ministers and presidents who lives abroad (his main residence is his Caribbean island) yet lands beefy government contracts? He would surely be subjected to scrutiny.
WHEnhe left his luxurious home of a morning or glided into some swanky awards dinner, he would be monstered by a TV inquisitor such as Michael Crick or Louis Theroux asking tricky questions.
‘Three billion pounds of public subsidy for your rail business, Sir Richard — why does an alleged entrepreneur of your calibre need such handouts from the state?’ we can imagine the gallant Crick shouting before being stiff-armed by bodyguards.
It doesn’t happen. Branson is treated by many broadcasters as some sort of guru. Is it because
they think he is a liberal? Yet he is no great democrat. Five days after the British people voted to leave the eU, remainer Branson was given an easy hit on ITV’s breakfast television to demand a second referendum.
The electorate had not understood the gravity of its decision, we were informed. The stock market had slumped. Bank shares were in crisis. We were going to go into recession and jobs were doomed. Branson did his trademark shake of the head — a gesture that seems to say ‘you fools’ — and the camera dwelt on his blond fringe, teased up like pampas grass, Gloria Hunniford in a breeze.
Yet the stock market bounced back strongly, bank shares rose, growth increased and employment reached a record high. He was so comprehensively wrong, you wonder how this booby ever made a bob on investments.
Why is he so esteemed? The Beeb included him in its ‘100 Greatest Britons’ poll — he came 85th, one behind steamengine inventor James Watt, one in front of U2’s Bono (not even British). He is frequently hailed as an authority on drugs policy. Why? Because he sits on something called the Global Commission on Drugs. But this is a self-appointed body of hasbeens, wannabes and seconddivision statesmen. He is an expert because he says he is!
A ‘global commission’ sounds important but is meaningless. In reality, it is a self-acclaiming global coterie that presumes moral superiority and imagines itself to stand above democratically elected politicians.
THIScommission is classic Branson: a gathering of passe meddlers, who get promoted as ‘ highly respected’ and are set up as dispassionate authorities. They may, in fact, be engaged in a campaign to liberalise drugs.
Personally, I have a measure of sympathy for that — that gives away my own roots in the liberal elite. But it is so sensitive an area of public policy that it should not be decided by some ex-record-company boss and a posse of dud ex- presidents (Switzerland, Portugal, Colombia, malawi, Poland, Brazil, Nigeria, Greece), ‘public intellectuals’ (mario Vargas Llosa, the late Carlos Fuentes) plus that nincompoop Nick Clegg.
To me, the commission just looks like a bunch of desperadoes anxious to increase their brand virtue. Sadly, its output is swallowed by editors and officials who are eager to suck up to a rich man who once did a few ballooning adventures and now brings the same egomaniacal energy to his political views.
In 2007, Branson hit on
another wheeze to promote himself and associate himself with some of the big names of international ‘thought leadership’. He went to Nelson Mandela and, having observed they shared a birthday (July 18), proposed that they mark the great day for perpetuity by creating a group called The Elders.
Just as tribal societies had village elders who were repositories of wisdom and experience, so, thought Branson, the world needed a group of gnarled Solomons who could be consulted at moments of dilemma or difficulty. The world needed him, the benevolent, blessed Branson.
The Elders would be given a seat and the global population would sit at their feet and wait, expectantly, until words of sage advice croaked from their parchment-dry larynxes.
The Elders have spoken. The Elders (like the man from Del Monte) say yes!
Who was going to elect these Elders? Foolish question. They would be selected by Branson and his friend Peter Gabriel, a faded pop singer. What do you call someone who selects world authorities? The Almighty? That may be how Branson sees himself.
Branson and his angel Gabriel came up with a list of Elders. It included former UN secretarygeneral Kofi Annan (he’s on the Global Drugs Commission, too), ex-U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Irish ex-President and windbag Mary Robinson, Mandela’s wife Graca Machel and Martti Ahtisaari, the Finnish ex-President (whose aperçus include ‘wars and conflicts are caused by human beings’. Gold star for Martti, please.)
The Elders were presented as an answer to global problems. They issued an annual review, which ‘ expressed concern’ (about things such as climate change and, more recently, Donald Trump) and painted their ‘vision’ (usually for ‘cooperation’ or ‘ solidarity’ or ‘safeguarding civil space’ or for ‘ bold and decisive action’, provided that decisiveness did not include anyone with nonliberal views).
They were served by a clever young secretariat, which created a website encouraging activists to make their voices heard in the ‘global village’.
So much effort, so slickly presented. And the world paid them almost no attention.
It therefore seems the very least one can do — drum roll, please — is to invite Sir Richard to step forward and accept the garland as the snootiest of the snoots, the all- comers’ champion when it comes to being a patronising swine.
Adapted from Patronising Bastards: How the elites Betrayed Britain, by Quentin letts, published by Constable on october 12 at £16.99. © Quentin letts 2017. to order a copy for £13.59 (offer valid until october 14, 2017) visit mailshop.co.uk/ books or call 0844 571 0640. P&P is free on orders over £15.