Doesn't Liam Fox even realise that it's his job to promote British businesses rather than malign them?
British businesses are already having a difficult time dealing with the uncertainty over Brexit, and Theresa May's evasive refusals to explain whether the government is going to be seeking to retain access to the European single market or not, now they've got a Tory minister for international trade slagging British business off as "too lazy, and too fat on our successes in previous generations" and complaining that they spend too much time playing golf rather than doing their jobs.
The idea that all British executives are lazy golf-playing wasters is an extraordinarily silly generalisation. We all know that in any country there are some lazy executives like that, some who just do their jobs and maintain a sensible work-life balance, and some who work themselves into an early grave with the stress and long hours. Crass generalisations are no good to anybody, but coming from the guy who's actual job it is to promote British businesses on the international stage, it's not just crass and stupid, it's reckless beyond belief.
Members of the CBI must be absolutely fuming that their decision to turn their business lobbying organisation into a blatant propaganda unit for the Tory party has been rewarded with such a massive kick in the teeth from the Tory minister who is supposed to actually be representing their interests on the world stage.
Liam Fox has already been disgraced once for giving his special friend Adam Werrity access to classified meetings during his stint as Defence Secretary. He should have been kept well away from responsible positions on the world stage from then on, but for some unknowable reason Theresa May handed him a reprieve and the vital role of looking after Britain's international trade interests during the Brexit negotiations, and within a couple of months he's shot himself in the foot by slagging off British businesses as lazy and uncompetitive.
Just imagine the horrified reaction from the mainstream press if it was one of Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet who had insulted British industry like that. "Unpatriotic" they'd wail. "Anti-business", "incompetent", "unfit for government" ....
Theresa May's Downing Street spin doctors have tried making the excuse for Fox that he was "clearly expressing private views" and the mainstream media have taken to uncritically repeating this astonishingly feeble excuse rather than pointing out how woeful it is.
Just try to imagine the BBC and the mainstream media uncriticially reporting this "just private views" excuse if it had've been one of Jeremy Corbyn's team describing British business as a load of shit.
Of course they wouldn't have just let this utterly feeble excuse slide, they would have lampooned it for the rubbish that it is, repeatedly demanded that the Labour shadow minister be sacked, and used it as a stick to beat the shadow minister with at every opportunity if Corbyn somehow decided that it would be a good move to keep such an incompetent blabber mouth in his top team.
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