On talking about Jagger, “Mick can write!” exclaimed Keith Richards in his autobiography. “It’s unbelievable how prolific he was. Sometimes you’d wonder how to turn the fucking tap off.” This has been written about at great length in the strategy of innovation literature (see for example this seminal article by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker.)
That is in fact meant to be hallmark of people who have extraordinary gifts as innovators. True innovators, considered to be at the heart of the recovery that never was in the UK, are prepared to have a few ‘dead ducks’ in the hope that one or two brilliant ideas will survive. Unfortunately, there is no sign of Osborne turning the f*-ing tap off just yet. And great innovating strategist he is not.
There has recently been much greater scrutiny amongst the Tory commentators of this accepted teaching that George Osborne is a ‘master strategician’. There is no clear sign of what this strategy is, for example in economics, his ‘day job’. One thing that you can say confidently about Osborne, however, is that he is very good at concealing his cock-ups. Thankfully, Duncan Robinson in “The Staggers” of the New Statesman provides a ‘hard copy’ of how Osborne had famously bragged about the wonders of Ireland as an economy, which Robinson accurately summarised on account of: “Ireland boomed instead on a toxic mix of cheap credit, lax banking regulation and by becoming a borderline tax haven.” George Osborne, who is addicted to bragging, claimed, “Ireland stands as a shining example of the art of the possible in long-term economic policymaking.” It’s virtually impossible to find a copy of this article – so if you have a copy of it please do let me know.
Some people on the Right would actually like Osborne to turn the f*ing tap off. He has become a ‘falling star’ in the sky of the Tories, as Fraser Nelson, elegantly put it, with one of the most catastrophically delivered Budgets ever in history (which Fraser describes as “shambolic”). There wasn’t any screw-up too minor or major for this Budget, ranging from pasties, to attacks on philanthropists, raids on pensioners, to name but a few. Osborne succeeded in protecting the high earners, who are not part of the ‘squeezed middle’ however Ed Miliband has finally decided to define this. Osborne should like to be perceived as Corporatilist with a big C – his Big C ethos is best illustrated by Robinson’s view of the Osborne Ultimatum on tax: “We should learn from Ireland’s mistakes. Unfortunately, however, Osborne wants to copy them — at least judging by Osborne’s cuts to universities, the 3.4 per cent reduction in the education budget and his continued obsession with reducing corporation tax — to the point where companies could end up paying less tax than their cleaners.”
George Osborne’s economic policy has failed, in a perverse opposite to ‘not mending the roof when the sun was shining’, rather ‘not spending on a new roof when it was bucketing down with rain’. You don’t need to have read Keynes’ 1948 ‘General Theory’ to understand how Osborne produced a textbook plan for producing a recession. This strategy has failed Britain. ‘Master strategists’ decided how to allocate resources effectively and how to build a competitive advantage; for example, spending time on campaigning against Scottish independence, a position supported by Labour, fails on both counts.
Osborne is instead the Conservatives’ chief thrower of custard pies. He is throwing so many custard pies, he is hoping one does land on Ed Balls, but this is a dubious desperate tactic; as per an article by James Forsyth, in a frenetic ‘J’accuse’, Osborne remarks, “They were clearly involved.” In this way, he comes the closest of the mentality of an innovative strategist. Steve Richards is correct, as is James Macintyre, to observe leadership qualities in Ed Miliband, in being right to capture the agenda of those who wish to implement ‘responsible capitalism’. Miliband’s speech in 2011 at conference I feel will go down in history as seminal. It has laid the foundations for the judge-led inquiry into the media which has been most instructive in exposing the corrupt phone-hacking. The majority of the country, according to a You Gov poll, want a public-inquiry into the banking industry, feeling that a parliamentary-inquiry would effectively sanction a ‘cover up’. Recent polling has also provided that George Osborne is perceived as one of the worst Chancellors in recent history.
The media has thus far been running a media ‘democratic deficit’, with Nick Cohen correctly observing that the agendas of writing the Corporatilist articles in the Right Wing press being at odds with the majority of readers who comment on them. The irony is that corporates don’t want a toxic culture either, with Prof. Porter, Professor of Strategy at Harvard Business School, who makes Osborne’s understanding of strategy look like O-level standard (keeping ahead of the times with Michael Gove), will be the first to tell you (see his seminal article in the Harvard Business Review). Corporates attract greater investment if they are pursuing ‘responsible capitalism’ policies, and this is now a well established fact in business. Furthermore, no business, in an international arena, will wish to invest their resources in a country, which Nick Cohen elegantly refers to as, “a pirate state which you visit, rob or be robbed but never to conduct honest business”
The problem is that the custard pie thrown at George Osborne will either miss or it won’t stick. It may be a useful short-term tactic, as argued by Steve Richards today, but it lacks credibility. Ed Balls has vigorously denied it, and Bob Diamond in his evidence yesterday did not play the ‘It’s all Labour’s fault‘ joker. An independent inquiry, led by the judiciary not the legislature essential for legal ‘separation of powers’, is the only way of finding out how a toxic culture can go unnoticed by CEOs of powerful corporates, and why banking is so much for the benefit of its shareholders rather than its customers. We need answers to this – in summary, Ed Miliband is right, and George Osborne is so very wrong.
