Today a Tory MP publicly accused the boss of a major UK employer of lying. The accusation was made by Bernard Jenkin who responded to the fears of Jaguar Land Rover that a "no deal" Brexit would be catastrophic for their company and their workforce by saying "I think he's making it up".
Now just imagine for a moment that a Labour Party MP had openly accused the boss of a major British employer of lying to the public.
The mainstream media would obviously be absolutely teaming with "Labour are the anti-business party" takes, at least for the rest of the day, and with the incident referenced over and again for months as evidence of Labour's anti-business agenda.
But because the badmouthing of British business is coming from a Tory MP, it's barely elicited a whisper of condemnation from mainstream media hacks, other than a few Tweets from half-decent journalists like Gavin Esler and Norman Smith.
Sustained media partisanship
Alarmingly this isn't the only example of highly partisan editorial decisions to avoid vehement condemnation of the Tories. Last week the majority of Tory MPs joined all the fascist parties in the European Parliament to vote in support of Viktor Orbán's anti-Semetic, judiciary-rigging, free speech-attacking, human rights-trashing regime in Hungary.
Again, just imagine the deafening howls of condemnation had it been Labour MEPs defying the European consensus to vote in favour of the most notorious anti-Semite in Europe, but somehow the Tories get a free pass.
Labour are now the party of business!
If you believed all the mainstream media rhetoric about Labour being rabid extreme-left fanatics under Jeremy Corbyn, the idea that they've taken over as the obvious pro-business party would seem insane, but the reality is very different from what orthodox neoliberals in the mainstream media are trying to make you think.
Admittedly Jeremy Corbyn has said that corporations would have to pay their fair share in tax (especially if they want to bid for government contracts) and that the Corporation Tax rate is going to have to rise so that it's back in line with the G7 average, which wouldn't go down all that well with Britain's most avid tax-dodgers and corporate profiteers.
However, most business leaders should be able to see the sense in many of Corbyn's strategies, and that the economic responsibility of paying their fair share in tax comes with significant payoffs too.
Making sure that major corporations pay their fair share in tax would create a much fairer playing field for hundreds of thousands of small and medium sized businesses that can't afford to pay expensive tax lawyers to hide their profits in tax havens.
Corbyn has clearly listened to British businesses (large and small) and to trade unions and he's made it clear that Labour would seek to retain access to the Customs Union and Single Market, while the Tories keep on threatening the ruination of a "no deal" Brexit and smearing prominent business leaders who express their concerns about this reckless game of ideological brinkmansip as liars!
Labour's policies of investing in Britain's creaking public infrastructure and building hundreds of thousands of affordable homes would clearly create huge opportunities for construction companies, engineering firms, and myriad suppliers.
Labour's "Build it in Britain" industrial policy certainly must make a lot of sense to British-based manufacturers.
And Labour's policy of introducing a National Education Service to provide free education and training to all, would clearly help to ensure that the UK has the kind of flexible and highly-skilled workforce that is needed in order to reverse the Tory productivity crisis and make Britain a high-tech economy fit for the 21st Century.
Whether you support Jeremy Corbyn's investment-based economic strategy or not, you certainly won't be hearing any Labour MPs saying "fuck business" like Boris Johnson, or smearing prominent British business leaders as liars like Bernard Jenkin just did.
You can read more about Labour's industrial strategy here.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
On Tuesday 11th April 2017 Jeremy Corbyn gave a speech to the Federation of Small Businesses in which he outlined a new Labour Party policy of clamping down on major corporations that screw their small business suppliers by withholding £billions worth of payments, often for months past the agreed payment dates.
The right-wing press were clearly terrified of this quality policy (a policy that only shills for massive corporations would directly oppose) so they decided to launch an underhand attack job instead, concentrating their negative coverage on an incident where Corbyn politely refused to answer a question about the conflict in Syria until after the small business conference was over.
It's telling that right-wing hacks at the Telegraph and Express chose to attack Corbyn over his (actually well received) refusal to answer an unrelated question until after the conference, rather than attack him over the actual content of the speech.
This is exactly how the mainstream media demonisation of Corbyn has worked. An academic study about anti-Corbyn bias in the mainstream press found that only 11% of newspaper articles about Jeremy Corbyn actually gave an accurate description of any of his policies, and in right-wing outlets like the Express and Daily Mail that figure was 0%!
The right-wing press clearly don't want you to think about Corbyn's actual policies, and focus instead on their shallow character attacks. So in the interest of balance I'm going to give you the chance to read Corbyn's speech for yourself and make up your own mind on whether his policies sound good or not.
Here it is:
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“I want to start by saying thank you. Thank you for inviting me here today and for that introduction.
But, most of all, to thank you all the Federation of Small Businesses for the role you are playing in holding the government to account. Not least in forcing the retreat last month, when, for now at least , they had to drop their 22 percent increase in the National Insurance rate for the self-employed.
You are respected on all sides of politics because you speak with the authority of your members; the sole traders, the entrepreneurs, the small businesses and you are effective, because you reflect the views of those members.
Like the best trade unions, when you say something, people listen and if they don’t? Well, just ask the Chancellor.
Labour does not believe that extra tax burdens should be falling on low and middle income workers, whether self-employed or directly employed.
And we also believe that if we are to restore faith in politics, then politicians have to stick by their word.
That means not breaking a clear manifesto pledge the Conservatives made that they would not increase National Insurance.
The Government’s decision to push a £2 billion tax rise on low and middle-earner self-employed broke that pledge. They hoped no one would notice. Well, we noticed. You noticed.
And what we have also noticed is that, while most of us have had to swallow seven years of austerity, some are being given hand-outs on an extraordinary scale.
George Osborne, and now Philip Hammond, have given the term ‘welfare state’ a whole new meaning - welfare for the wealthiest.
The Tories have cut the corporation tax rate for bigger companies, from 28 per cent in 2010 to 17 per cent by 2020.
Over the six years from 2016 to 2022, the total giveaway, the total revenue lost to the public purse, will be £63.8 billion, according to the government’s own figures.
And let’s be clear, all of that giveaway will go to big companies.
Remember, the corporation tax rate for small companies in 2010 was already, under the previous Labour Government, set at 21 per cent.
That means that by 2020, big companies will have had an 11 percentage point decrease in corporation tax, while the rate for small companies will have been cut by only four percentage points.
And the differential between big and small companies will have been eliminated completely, with both on 17 per cent.
So, there has clearly been a bias here in the approach of the Government.
A bias against small business.
A bias that was evident in the attempt to increase national insurance for the self-employed.
A bias that holds back hard working people who want to make a living independently.
A bias against entrepreneurs who want to start and build new businesses; creating jobs, innovating and helping to make Britain richer. Not for the very rich few, but for the many.
Labour will have a different bias.
Yesterday we reaffirmed our commitment to a Real Living Wage.
Low pay and in-work poverty don’t just hurt those directly affected, they mean more public money going on in-work benefits instead of investing in our future. And they mean fewer pounds going to your businesses.
We know that some of you will struggle to pay your staff more. That’s why we have promised additional support for your businesses, and are looking at expanding and reforming the Employment Allowance.
We will support those striving to make a living through self-employment and in small businesses, not just because it is the right and fair thing to do, but because millions of jobs and the future of our country depends on it.
Labour’s business team, our shadow Business Secretary, Rebecca Long Bailey, and our Shadow Minister for Small Business, Bill Esterson, have been working hard on this.
They, and the Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, tell me how important their relationship is with you, how valued your voice and insights are.
So, I want to share with you today the approach that will guide our relationship and then explain how I see it working in practice.
Firstly, Labour believes in fair taxation. So our policies will follow two cast-iron principles forged in our values:
Any tax rises will fall most heavily on those with the broadest shoulders and will be a something-for-something deal. When we ask for more contributions we’ll be clear about what you’re getting in return.
Secondly, we want to level the playing field to ensure that no one is being held back due to unfair advantages of the economically and politically powerful using their entrenched positions to hold back the enterprise of others.
And, finally, we will invest to give you the best platform to succeed, with world-leading infrastructure: digital, transport and energy, as well as better access to growth capital, whether it is through loans or equity.
Let me look at those points in more detail.
When I say any tax rises will fall on the broadest shoulders, I want to make it clear today that we will not raise the small business corporation tax rate.
What we cannot accept, however, is that it is right or necessary for big companies to have been given a 40 per cent cut in their corporation tax rate, at a time when others are suffering austerity and the budget deficit remains out of control.
Britain has the lowest corporation tax in the G7, now by quite some distance.
So, corporation tax for bigger companies will move closer to the levels of other major economies.
But it will be a something-for-something deal, we will use that extra revenue to invest in skills.
Employers are telling us that they need a more skilled workforce and that they struggle to recruit.
Which is hardly surprising when, in the last seven years, the further education budget has been cut by one-seventh, or when the adult skills budget has been cut in half
And last year, as student maintenance grants were abolished, university applications fell.
We need a highly skilled workforce, and a state that can re-train and re-skill people as the economy evolves.
That’s why Labour has set out a vision for a National Education Service, from early years to lifelong learning.
Because we know that education matters, whether it’s high quality universal childcare that allows you the time and space to start and develop your business.
Or whether it’s the chance to re-train later in life; opportunity needs to be there for everyone.
And today too many people and too many businesses are being held back by the lack of investment in training.
Which leads me to the second element of our approach, a level playing field.
What people running small businesses tell me is that they are fed up with there being one rule for them and another for big business.
Whether it’s tax avoidance, late payment to suppliers or business rates – giant companies seem to be privileged and sometimes a law unto themselves.
No one likes paying tax. We don’t wake up in the morning thinking, “Oh, I really must pay some more tax today”. But most of us know that taxes are essential to a civilised society and a successful economy.
Business needs skilled workers and good infrastructure. People who run businesses also have families who need the health and caring services their taxes fund.
So most of us play by the rules. We do our tax returns, as you know, mine seems to attract more attention than most but that’s okay, transparency is important.
But some people don’t play by the rules, they use all sorts of elaborate ruses like shell companies or tax havens or offshore trusts to side step the rules.
My local independent coffee shop can’t spend thousands on accountants to avoid paying tax but a big chain of coffee shops can and does.
And small businesses can’t make sweetheart deals with the tax authorities like Google or Vodafone seemingly manage to.
So when we say we will clamp down hard on tax avoidance and legislate to close loopholes, that’s not anti-business, it’s anti-cheating.
So we will give HM Revenue & Customs more powers and more resources and I can announce today we’ll save them one onerous burden, and I hope it’s one you’ll approve of too.
In the budget, the Chancellor bowed to pressure by delaying the implementation of quarterly reporting for small businesses by one year.
That’s not good enough; Labour is against small businesses having to report quarterly. It’s a burden, a distraction, that will hold entrepreneurs back.
Labour will scrap year quarterly reporting for small businesses with a turnover of less than £83,000, to help you focus on growing your business.
And we will tackle another problem that I know is a burning issue and overdue for attention.
Small businesses are owed £26 billion in late payments.
Cash is king for any business and big companies are managing their cash by borrowing – interest free – from their suppliers.
Some of the biggest names in business are holding huge cash piles that don’t actually belong to them.
And I’m going to name some names based on the reports of a reputable credit agency:
- Marks and Spencer pays its suppliers 72 days over terms
- E.On – the German energy provider, currently pays 78 days over terms
- Capita – a major player in the public sector, pays 82 days over terms
- Vodafone – 84 days over terms
- National Grid – a whopping 119 days
And I could go on.
But note this is ‘over terms’ and the terms they impose could be 45 days or 60 days to start with. So, we’re talking about big companies paying their suppliers, in some cases, six months or more after they have done the work or delivered the goods.
It’s a national scandal.
And it’s not just late payment.
There was also the case of Premier Foods charging companies to be on their supplier list.
And of John Lewis demanding a ‘rebate’ from suppliers when their products sold well, a kind of penalty for success.
And I gather from what you have told me there are many instances of big companies refusing to pay an invoice in full and then saying ‘sue me’ as if small businesses have the time and money to fight legal battles against the commercial giants.
We will look at all of this because late payment and the other practices I’ve mentioned are stopping businesses from growing and causing thousands to go bust every year.
Late payment kills jobs and holds back economic growth.
Bill Esterson has been doggedly pursuing this issue in Parliament and I am keen that we work with you to tackle this issue
There are different options to assess.
Government, through procurement, can ensure that anyone bidding for a contract pays its own suppliers within 30 days. It’s normal now to ask for accounts and credit checks, so this would involve no extra paperwork.
For the private sector, we’ve been looking at the Australian system that involves binding arbitration and fines for persistent late payers.
It needs to be a system with teeth. A system that delivers a fair deal for small suppliers
And we want to work with you to get this right.
No small business owner should have to go begging to the banks, or even re-mortgaging their homes, just because a customer considers themselves too big and too important to pay on time.
But let me send a clear message to the captains of industry today, a Labour Government will declare war on late payment.
Alongside that, Labour will introduce a radical reform of business rates.
The Government’s piecemeal concessions fall far short of what’s needed.
And so, in consultation with business , Labour set out five points that will guide our policies in government:
- There will be no “cliff edge” increases in rates and a fair and transparent appeals process.
- We will bring forward CPI indexation so that businesses aren’t paying more because of how inflation is measured.
- We will exclude new investment in plant and machinery from future business rates valuation. We want to encourage, not discourage, business investment.
- We will introduce more regular valuations to stop businesses facing periodic and unmanageable hikes.
- Also, we need fundamental reform of the business rates system … to ease the burden on traditional high streets and town centres in the age of online shopping and to create a fairer system of business taxation.
And that brings me to the third theme of our approach to small business namely, investment.
Britain’s infrastructure is second rate and falling even further behind other major economies.
And, frankly, this government has an abysmal record. They have failed to modernise the economy, whether it’s in broadband, energy, transport or housing.
And, at the same time, they have not done enough to finance growth in the small business sector.
That’s why Labour is committed to establishing a National Investment Bank with regional investment banks for every region of England.
This year, the Welsh Labour government is creating the Development Bank for Wales.
Its purpose will be to create and safeguard over 5,500 jobs a year by 2022 by providing more than £1 billion of investment support to Welsh business over that period.
This has not come out of the blue. Labour in Wales has nearly two decades’ experience of working with the FSB and other business organisations.
It has taken on board your feedback about the forerunner to the development bank, Finance Wales.
And my business team at Westminster will take a keen interest in the launch of the Development Bank for Wales, and the work it does to generate growth and jobs.
The prime minister regularly accuses me of wanting to bankrupt Britain by borrowing money to fund investment.
But as every businessperson knows there is a world of difference between borrowing for capital spending and borrowing to fund the payroll and day to day trading or service delivery.
The risk of bankruptcy comes not when you borrow to invest in projects that will deliver growth but when you give unfair tax breaks to big companies and the wealthy, when you have a big deficit and not enough money to run public services.
Labour’s vision is of a richer Britain, a Britain in which hard working people are not held back.
Britain has more than five million small to medium sized businesses employing more than 15 million people; sixty per cent of the private sector workforce.
Labour is committed to creating an environment in which you can grow, through fair taxation, tough action to level the playing field, including on late payment, and through investment in skills and infrastructure.
The only thing we ask of you, as part of this deal, is social responsibility in the way you operate. Fairness in employment, attention to health and safety, safeguards for the environment, high service and product standards for your consumers.
The economy under the Conservatives is being held back by low investment, low skills, low productivity and low wages.
They believe the way for Britain to succeed is to win the race to the bottom. To become a tax dodgers’ paradise, content with rising poverty, falling social mobility and the next generation worse off than the last. It’s gone too far.
A productive economy requires government to have a partnership with business. Building the platform for you to succeed. While guaranteeing fairness for all.
This is a virtuous circle; good investment by government, good practice by business, good public services, funded by a productive, growing economy with fair taxation.
Your businesses suffer when public services are in crisis.
When people have to take time off to care for ill or elderly relatives, because social care is in crisis.
When people are in too much pain to work, but still waiting for an operation.
When our schools and colleges aren’t delivering enough skilled workers.
I’ve set out Labour’s three principles; fair taxation, a level playing field and investment.
And I want to add one final principle, to listen and engage with people like you, the experts in their area.
I think we need more experts, not fewer, informing our policy and politics.
I started by saying that I saw the FSB as a trade union; standing up for your members.
The Party I lead, the Labour Party, is as the name suggests, a party of workers. But we’re also the party of co-operatives, of entrepreneurs, of owner managers who work hard in their businesses.
And that’s why it’s been a privilege to address you today.
Thank you."
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If like me, you thought that speech was actually pretty good, you might also like to a little bit to confront the ongoing mainstream media bias against Jeremy Corbyn by giving his speech a share on social media, or emailing it to anyone you know who runs a small business and who may be interested.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
Jeremy Corbyn's latest new policy proposal to defend small businesses from late payments by major corporations is a real winner. It's precisely the kind of business-friendly policy a lot of people have been saying that Labour should have been promoting for a long time.
In order to clearly differentiate themselves from the Conservatives Labour need to position themselves on the side of ordinary workers and small businesses. The £10 minimum wage is clearly a worker-friendly policy, and this new policy of cracking down on the late payment of suppliers by massive corporations is a great strategy to get small and medium sized enterprises onside.
In order to raise awareness of how bad the problem of late payment of suppliers is, Corbyn named and shamed several major companies over their refusal to pay their suppliers in a timely manner, accusing them of taking interest-free cash loans from their suppliers:
National Grid pays suppliers 119 days over terms, BT pays 89 days late, Vodafone pays 84 days late, Capita 82 days late, E-on pays 78 days late, and Marks and Spencer 72 days.
When the terms themselves allow 45 or 60 days for payment, it's clear that these major corporations are using their buying power in order to extract interest-free loans from their suppliers for up to six months at a whack.
Major corporations are withholding an astounding £26 billion through late payment, which is responsible for an estimated 50,000 small businesses going bust every year. The scale of this problem is so massive that it should be a national scandal, and Jeremy Corbyn is absolutely right to align himself with small businesses to defend their interests.
Clamping down on late payment of suppliers is a cracking policy initiative because pretty much nobody could oppose it other than shills for greedy major corporations. If the Tories are going to oppose it then it puts them in the difficult position of having to defend the indefensible.
The policy was well received at the Federation of Small Businesses where it was announced, and even the mainstream press struggled to find some ultra-negative spin to put on it.
The best anti-Corbyn spin the mainstream media hacks could come up with was a load of coordinated whinging that Corbyn refused to answer a BBC journalist's question on Syria right in the middle of the FSB event. However the actual footage made it clear that Corbyn agreed to answer the Syria questions after the small business event, and that he got a round of applause for standing his ground from the small business people in the audience.
Any Labour Party member must hope that even the Labour party right-wingers would get behind this particular policy, because if Labour are to have any hope in the future (with or without Corbyn as leader) they're going to need to get small businesses and independent traders on their side.
Unfortunately a lot of Labour Party right-wingers, including Blair himself, have made it absolutely clear that the long-term future of the Labour Party is secondary to their main objective of damaging Corbyn's leadership as much as possible.
It's unlikely Corbyn's new policy to protect small businesses from the outright greed of major corporations will get a fair hearing in the mainstream press, especially if the Labour Party right-wingers decide to attack him from within rather than support a business-friendly policy they would no doubt be cheering about under any other leader. This means that it's up to ordinary Labour Party members who approve of the policy to spread awareness of it as far as possible, by sharing coverage of it on social media, and more importantly talking about it in real conversations, especially with people who don't really engage with social media.
Read Corbyn's full speech to the Federation of Small Businesses here
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
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.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
The Tories are always harping on about the evils of regulations and "red tape".
Whenever they need an excuse for their latest attack on workers' rights they churn out the same old rhetoric about how the rules that protect us from unsafe working environments and unscrupulous bosses are burdensome "red tape" that needs to be cut back in order to increase "prosperity".
Just think about the way the Tories have abjectly failed to reform the financial sector after their appalling spree of reckless gambling and outright fraud crashed the economy. "We couldn't possibly burden the banks with regulations to stop them from paying themselves vast salaries as they resume exactly the same kind of unsustainable bubble inflation schemes that crashed the economy the last time around" say the Tories, because "regulations are bad for business".
Bearing in mind how much the Tories claim to hate regulations, it seems more than a bit strange that they're pushing ahead with plans to force all small businesses and self-employed people to start filling out their tax returns four times a year instead of once.
Lumbering millions of small businesses with so much additional bureaucracy seems to be completely at odds with the Tory rhetoric about their hatred of "red tape", so what is it actually all about?
One possible explanation is that the Tory party see small businesses and self-employed people as a threat to the large corporations and corporate fat cats who provide the vast bulk of donations to the Tory party. If the objective of the Tory party is to favour the interests of their large corporate donors, then tying up their small competitors with even more "red tape" would be a brilliant way of achieving it.
The more time small businesses and independent traders are forced to spend filling out tax returns, the less competitive they'll be against the giant corporations favoured by the Tory party (many of which use elaborate tax-dodging schemes instead of paying their fair share anyway).
In my view this whole ridiculous debacle is a huge gift for the opposition parties. An awful lot of small business owners and self-employed people have suffered under the absurd delusion that the Tory party looks after their interests, rather than the interests of the gigantic tax-dodging corporations who can afford to stuff vast sums of cash into the Tory party coffers.
This absurd Tory policy is an ideal opportunity for opposition parties to stand up for small businesses and the self-employed by vigorously opposing it. Whether the opposition parties are competent enough to choose to shoot at the open goal the Tories have presented them with is another matter entirely.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
