Off to the boardroom

By Colin Challen

Why do I find it so depressing that retired senior Labour politicians believe it as natural as waking up that the next best thing to do in life is join a boardroom (or boardrooms) to pass on advice gleaned from their political careers? Is there nothing else they can do? Could they not become academics, go back to law (defending the poor), volunteering, charity work, even councilloring? Certainly some do do these things, but there seems to be a lengthy list of ex-ministers and others for whom the position of corporate gofer confers the status they crave. Pat Hewitt, Geoff Hoon, Jack Cunningham, Ann Taylor, Sally Morgan – Tony himself of course – the list goes on.

I guess a justification for this migration might be that they will be ‘batting for British jobs’ or some other such noble purpose, rather than the lucre doled out in reward for some ill-defined but well understood private benefit. And that’s just it. There is – or ought to be – a difference between representing people particularly from the Labour perspective, and representing corporate interests. That so many see the latter as a natural progression from the former is worrying. Had there been a clearer distinction between corporate and public good in recent times we may have stood a better chance of avoiding the economic dump we are now struggling with.

But, once in the stratosphere some of these people are reluctant to come down. No doubt if you have been to Davos, or rubbed shoulders with bankers at a Bilderberg meeting, or hob-nobbed at any other of the multitudinous events that form the international corporate nexus, life would indeed be tough outside this self regarding bubble. Almost as tough perhaps as it is for those who never entered it and in whose interest the Labour Party must now fight, against a government determined to fillet the public interest until there is nothing left but parched bones.

What signals do our erstwhile colleagues send? That the whole thing was just a knowing game (as of course one might suspect following the Murdoch depredations)? Or that Labour is irredeemably knotted to the mast of the stinking rich, nevermind merely ‘relaxed’ about there being such a species in the first place?

We have not yet found our voice after the economic crisis – a crisis which clearly is a long way from over. Might people find our arguments more persuasive if we put some distance between ourselves and the something for nothing (or money for old rope in the case of the above-named) mindset which says – so to speak – ‘I am a cab for hire?’

Let’s have a ban, written into the PLP’s rules, which prohibits ex-ministers from joining this boardroom migration for at least 10 years.