Andrew Griffith is the Shadow Secretary of State for Business and Trade, MP for Arundel and South Downs and a former FTSE100 Finance Director and COO.
Defence Secretary, John Healey discovered this week what most of us already knew: Labour is incapable of making tough choices. At a time when our nation is chronically indebted, over-taxed, and burdened with an out-of-control welfare bill, making decisions to find billions for the defence of the realm is simply too difficult for the party in power to stomach. Whilst not a surprise, it is shocking none the less.
Outside of Westminster, tough choices are the stock in trade for the millions of businesses who make up the productive part of our economy. Not just big, once-in-a-parliament type decisions, but daily, relentless choices that must be made to be successful. A discipline that is natural in business or the leadership of other organisations — including the armed forces — is all too scarce in Westminster. As a finance director of one of the UK’s largest companies, you quickly find out it is more important to be respected than to be popular.
Kemi Badenoch recently highlighted how almost the entire Labour frontbench, and the majority of the present Parliament, has no background in business. For the good of the country, that must change. There is plenty of scope to build a business career before parliament. The average age of an MP is 48. While many will be younger, that leaves plenty of decades to gain valuable experience before being elected.
If you are in business and curious enough to be reading this article, then this is my ‘call to arms’ in support of Kemi’s request that “Politics shouldn’t be a last refuge for those who have done nothing else. It should be a duty taken up by people with busy schedules and something to offer.”
I made that leap for my home constituency in West Sussex back in 2019. A different era before the pandemic, before Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine, and to be honest, before it became obvious that the then Conservative parliamentary party had temporarily taken leave of any self-discipline and too many of its philosophical convictions. There is much that I wish had been done differently, but I don’t regret having been elected to be one of the 650 individuals privileged to make the decisions shaping the future of our country in a parliamentary democracy whose ‘origin story’ stretches back to 1215 and Magna Carta.
Despite what you might hear about being an MP from those who perhaps lack the courage to stand themselves, constituents are overwhelmingly delightful and your own parliamentary colleagues are some of the most interesting people with whom you could ever wish to spend your time.
Every business will touch many lives and do much good, but Government is the ultimate scale challenge. Getting it right comes with the ultimate reward of a country we feel proud to pass on to our children and grandchildren. Achievements are always about teamwork, but I do feel that in different ministerial roles I was able to achieve things. The turn-around of the disastrous, risk-averse regulation of the financial sector; rescuing Silicon Valley’s UK bank; negotiating post-EU agreements with Switzerland, Saudi Arabia and the UAE; and supporting vital growth areas like quantum, space and synthetic biology. The sort of broad and important contributions beyond those achievable in any business career.
The next government of this country will have to be the most ‘match fit’ that any incoming administration has ever been. Plans in place on day one. A fully ready agenda to reform a broken system of Whitehall administration and its legions of unaccountable arms-length bodies. A new model of Parliamentary scrutiny and accountability to both make and repeal laws. It will take a radicalism and ambition which is equal to the task of reversing decades of state failure, anaemic growth and unabated indebtedness.
Faint hearts need not apply, but it’s the sort of challenge – a turnaround – which is not uncommon within the business world.
As Sir Humphrey says to Bernard in Yes, Minister, “If the right people don’t have power, do you know what happens? The wrong people get it!”. I doubt Sir Humphrey was thinking of those with experience of business, ready to properly challenge Whitehall mandarins, as “the right people”, but I certainly do, and so the sentiment still rings true.
Today we are governed by the wrong people — and with predictable results. Decisions deferred, fudged or simply not made at all are an abrogation of duty. They lead to stasis in a world where all too many other countries are very happy to make decisions which will lead to our insecurity and impoverishment.
If you run a business big or small, you will know the pain of not being heard by politicians. You will know the weight of the tax axe hanging over your neck. You will know the frustration of having to deal with yet another roll of red tape — all imposed on you by people who just don’t get it. The solution is for those of us who do ‘get it’ to step up.
Kemi is one of the people who does get it. She’s an engineer with a background in the private sector, and she has called on people from all walks of life to come forward and help to change the party as candidates.
If you’re looking for a sign, this is it.
Help us to ensure that the Conservative party is the party of business. Be a candidate, be an MP, and be part of the transformation Britain so desperately needs.
Andrew Griffith is the Shadow Secretary of State for Business and Trade, MP for Arundel and South Downs and a former FTSE100 Finance Director and COO.
Defence Secretary, John Healey discovered this week what most of us already knew: Labour is incapable of making tough choices. At a time when our nation is chronically indebted, over-taxed, and burdened with an out-of-control welfare bill, making decisions to find billions for the defence of the realm is simply too difficult for the party in power to stomach. Whilst not a surprise, it is shocking none the less.
Outside of Westminster, tough choices are the stock in trade for the millions of businesses who make up the productive part of our economy. Not just big, once-in-a-parliament type decisions, but daily, relentless choices that must be made to be successful. A discipline that is natural in business or the leadership of other organisations — including the armed forces — is all too scarce in Westminster. As a finance director of one of the UK’s largest companies, you quickly find out it is more important to be respected than to be popular.
Kemi Badenoch recently highlighted how almost the entire Labour frontbench, and the majority of the present Parliament, has no background in business. For the good of the country, that must change. There is plenty of scope to build a business career before parliament. The average age of an MP is 48. While many will be younger, that leaves plenty of decades to gain valuable experience before being elected.
If you are in business and curious enough to be reading this article, then this is my ‘call to arms’ in support of Kemi’s request that “Politics shouldn’t be a last refuge for those who have done nothing else. It should be a duty taken up by people with busy schedules and something to offer.”
I made that leap for my home constituency in West Sussex back in 2019. A different era before the pandemic, before Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine, and to be honest, before it became obvious that the then Conservative parliamentary party had temporarily taken leave of any self-discipline and too many of its philosophical convictions. There is much that I wish had been done differently, but I don’t regret having been elected to be one of the 650 individuals privileged to make the decisions shaping the future of our country in a parliamentary democracy whose ‘origin story’ stretches back to 1215 and Magna Carta.
Despite what you might hear about being an MP from those who perhaps lack the courage to stand themselves, constituents are overwhelmingly delightful and your own parliamentary colleagues are some of the most interesting people with whom you could ever wish to spend your time.
Every business will touch many lives and do much good, but Government is the ultimate scale challenge. Getting it right comes with the ultimate reward of a country we feel proud to pass on to our children and grandchildren. Achievements are always about teamwork, but I do feel that in different ministerial roles I was able to achieve things. The turn-around of the disastrous, risk-averse regulation of the financial sector; rescuing Silicon Valley’s UK bank; negotiating post-EU agreements with Switzerland, Saudi Arabia and the UAE; and supporting vital growth areas like quantum, space and synthetic biology. The sort of broad and important contributions beyond those achievable in any business career.
The next government of this country will have to be the most ‘match fit’ that any incoming administration has ever been. Plans in place on day one. A fully ready agenda to reform a broken system of Whitehall administration and its legions of unaccountable arms-length bodies. A new model of Parliamentary scrutiny and accountability to both make and repeal laws. It will take a radicalism and ambition which is equal to the task of reversing decades of state failure, anaemic growth and unabated indebtedness.
Faint hearts need not apply, but it’s the sort of challenge – a turnaround – which is not uncommon within the business world.
As Sir Humphrey says to Bernard in Yes, Minister, “If the right people don’t have power, do you know what happens? The wrong people get it!”. I doubt Sir Humphrey was thinking of those with experience of business, ready to properly challenge Whitehall mandarins, as “the right people”, but I certainly do, and so the sentiment still rings true.
Today we are governed by the wrong people — and with predictable results. Decisions deferred, fudged or simply not made at all are an abrogation of duty. They lead to stasis in a world where all too many other countries are very happy to make decisions which will lead to our insecurity and impoverishment.
If you run a business big or small, you will know the pain of not being heard by politicians. You will know the weight of the tax axe hanging over your neck. You will know the frustration of having to deal with yet another roll of red tape — all imposed on you by people who just don’t get it. The solution is for those of us who do ‘get it’ to step up.
Kemi is one of the people who does get it. She’s an engineer with a background in the private sector, and she has called on people from all walks of life to come forward and help to change the party as candidates.
If you’re looking for a sign, this is it.
Help us to ensure that the Conservative party is the party of business. Be a candidate, be an MP, and be part of the transformation Britain so desperately needs.