The fat cats’ pay packets fill up again “Taking back control” in Britain

“Normal service” has been restored for “members of the FTSE 100 chief executive club”, says Nils Pratley. After suffering a “shocking” 12% pay fall in 2016, they enjoyed a collective 11% pay rise last year, with the average boss pocketing £3.9m, according to the High Pay Centre’s annual tally. The report’s compilers “sound surprised by their numbers”; they’d been expecting “greater downward pressure”. But any “real government pressure” to curb pay “evaporated as soon as Theresa May abandoned her tough talk about putting workers on boards”. From 2020, the publication of pay ratios will be mandatory, but many companies may simply “baffle outsiders” with the complexity of their remuneration reports. “That leaves shareholders to apply the brake.” The Investment Association keeps a “name and shame” list of offenders who have suffered a 20%-plus revolt against a pay report; but it remains to be seen whether companies can, in practice, be shamed. Ultimately, “it is that silent majority of supine fund managers, resistant to scrutiny of their own rewards, who set the underlying tone”.

The endless battles over Brexit mean that few politicians are “seriously engaged” in thinking about “how the world might look after our departure”, says Mark Littlewood. It’s time they started. “Simmering resentment with the power of Whitehall” could well ensure that it becomes the next target of “a growing urge to take back control”. In terms of taxes, the UK is by far the most centralised country in the Western world: only about 5% of tax revenues are raised locally, compared with nearly three times that amount in France, and a near 50-50 split in Canada and the US between federal and municipal taxes. Campaigners want change, arguing that “true local power requires the devolution of tax and spending to go hand in hand”, and that local government should also be handed “substantial regulatory control”. At present, local discretion over policies, from land planning to public health, is minimal, “and the ability to liberalise, rather than tighten, rules is almost non-existent”. No wonder we are seeing a “popular rebellion against opaque and concentrated political power”: we need “a new constitutional deal within the United Kingdom”.