The blindness of Britain’s business elite

Philip Stephens

Financial Times

Britain may soon have its most left-wing government in history, says Philip Stephens. Labour is neck-and-neck with the Tories, and its leaders have made no bones about their desire to dismantle our capitalist system. You’d think that would terrify business leaders, yet they seem to feel assured that, even if Labour does win, the realities of power will force it to temper its “red-blooded socialism” – a rash assumption in the age of Trump and Brexit. Rather than trusting things will work out, they should be asking why “an electorate known for its cautious pragmatism” is now thinking of electing “unreconstructed Marxists”. Could it have to do with the fact that the incomes of FTSE 100 bosses quadrupled between 1998 and 2015, while most Britons’ pay stagnated? Or that the energy, water and railway industries that Labour wants to nationalise are “now run by avaricious oligopolies”? Jeremy Corbyn and John Mcdonnell, the would-be chancellor, aren’t touting sensible remedies, but they’ve learnt something from Brexit and Trump: “if the old elites are wearing blindfolds you can win simply by recognising something has gone badly wrong”.