Scottish Daily Mail

Bye Blighty, hello barbie

- Alex Brummer

PLAYING in the first team of the world’s seven largest economies is not easy. Neverthele­ss, economics and household budgets have played little part in Britain’s lacklustre election campaign, broken as it has been by the horrors of terrorism. But when people do actually cast their votes today one suspects it will be ‘the economy stupid’ that will decide.

Why vote for the unknown and a throwback to the economic and financial chaos threatened by Labour’s policies when you can opt for steady expansion with the incumbent Tories?

But if we were to end up with financial turmoil and fiscal profligacy Britons are not short of options. Among the easiest for the young, the ambitious and the entreprene­urial would be to make the same journey as 1.2m other Brits and go down under.

having spent a few weeks in Sydney this year and seen directly the satisfying career choices of my nieces and nephews it is hard not to envy a more laid-back lifestyle alongside commercial achievemen­t.

Being a second tier economy (in terms of size) is no bad thing when it is able to weather kinks in the economic cycle. The latest quarterly data from Australia shows that output expanded by a miserly 0.3pc in the first quarter.

That may seem unimpressi­ve until one realises that our Aussie cousins have experience­d 103 successive quarters, or just under 26 years of expanding growth.

There is some dispute as to whether this is a record and Australia may have been pipped to the post by holland and possibly post-war Japan. It doesn’t much matter.

Natural resources are central to Aussie prosperity and it has benefited enormously from the manufactur­ing boom in China. It has also been good for London-quoted miners including Rio Tinto and BhP.

But it is a mistake to think that it is the only source of prosperity. Mining accounts for 7pc of gross domestic product which, as in Britain, is dwarfed by services, which account for 73pc. Indeed, constructi­on is larger than natural resources.

Looking ahead, a jump in mining investment, as an end to the commodity bust is sighted, and return to confidence among consumers augur well.

What is certain is that should our election produce an unfortunat­e result which demonises free markets, the queues outside Australia house on the Strand in central London will stretch around the block. Pay gaffes The silence of business in the election campaign has been deafening. One theory is that boardroom chieftains are none too happy about Theresa May’s commitment to curb excess in the boardroom.

If we needed fresh evidence that greed is not yet defeated then look no further than ‘Drastic’ Dave Lewis’s decision to happily accept a £142,000 allowance from Tesco for moving a few miles down the road as part of his £4.1m pay package.

Then there is the gift of £10m of shares to Burberry’s sidelined chief executive Christophe­r Bailey. It said Bailey’s award was granted as part of the package of enhancemen­ts designed to keep him in post when his design skills were being poached by another luxury fashion marque.

One understood, however, that it was precisely because of that that he was promoted to the position of chief executive, a role that he has had to relinquish because of suboptimal performanc­e.

If May’s reforms were in place Burberry accounts would show Bailey’s earnings came to 294 times that of the average employee – a huge embarrassm­ent for him and a gift to critics of free market capitalism.

Boardroom chutzpah has few boundaries. When US business broadcaste­r CNBC sought a business voice to comment on the UK election it turned to WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell. As fine a global commentato­r as he may be he doesn’t do FTSe 100 chiefs any favours with his £48m pay packet, which has raised the ire of many investors.

Own goal or what? Selling UK plc IS ANGLO American, venerable owner of De Beers, putting up the ‘for sale’ sign?

The choice of Stuart Chambers as next chairman would suggest the answer is ‘Yes’. he has dispatched three FTSe companies into overseas hands – glassmaker Pilkington, packaging champion Rexam and, controvers­ially, British tech innovator ARM.

Not a comforting record.

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