This is the first election since 2001 in which I have not been a candidate. Stepping away from frontline politics was the hardest decision I have ever made. Only time will tell if I called it right.
Like everything else in British politics now, it was all to do with Brexit.
Every decade or so since I first became politically aware, a cataclysmic event has shaped politics for the next era. In 1967, it was devaluation; in 1978, the “winter of discontent”; in 1990, the poll tax; the invasion of Iraq in 2003; and now, finally, the 2016 referendum on our membership of the EU. All these epoch-defining events were either gross policy failures in themselves, or the consequences of such failures.
My dad was a successful, self-made businessman. My formative years were steeped in his commercial ups and downs. And these ups and downs influenced my political outlook very profoundly. The Conservative party I joined at the age of 17 was the party of business and enterprise. And that identity stood the test of time until the aftermath of the Brexit referendum.
I was proud to serve as a business minister under Greg Clark, an excellent secretary of state for the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. At that point, nobody foresaw all the disastrous consequences the referendum would have. We were able to travel in hope, developing and implementing our industrial strategy, while the preliminary negotiations with the EU were compartmentalised.
Since then, of course, Brexit has come to dominate every waking hour of government; sidelining progress on all other crucially important areas of policy. During my three years as a business-facing minister, I witnessed the steady decline in business confidence as the uncertainty mounted. At the beginning of this year, the mood changed from that of worry and confusion to one of anger and despair. I was aghast that a Conservative government, of which I was a member, had brought the world of business so low.
The most powerful way I have of expressing the emotion I feel goes back to the unforgettable speech given by Neil Kinnock in 1985 in which he summed up how the policies of the extreme-left Militant Tendency had ended with “the grotesque chaos of a Labour council — a Labour council — hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers.” Yes, the way the Conservative government has hung business out to dry reminds me so much of that moment.
I attended and hosted many events with businesses all over the country during my time as a minister. I had one stock question at each of them: “What opportunities might you be planning to capitalise on from Brexit?” This question produced either a hollow laugh or an embarrassed silence. Only one decent answer ever came forth: “Well it might sharpen us up as a country to take some necessary actions that we should have taken years ago.” Fair enough, Britain has traditionally done well in adversity. But what a price to pay!
However the Brexit drama ends, the damage we have done to ourselves, on so many levels, will take years to undo. But we can at least get on with those things we should have done years ago. Many of them formed pillars of our industrial strategy. Action on skills, access to talent, greening our economy, enabling technology transfer, making it easier for growing businesses to access capital and better transport connections will be the basis for the dramatic improvements to productivity this country so desperately needs to see.
Each of those areas requires robust policy development and obsessive implementation. Although I have had my differences with Prime Minister Boris Johnson, I do have grounds for hope, based on his record as mayor of London, and his more recent policy announcements.
I know the prime minister to be in favour of a liberal immigration policy. For both the main sectors I represented in government, digital and the creative industries, ready access to global talent is an absolute prerequisite of continued growth. Yesterday, saw the announcement of a new NHS visa, to expedite the flow of doctors and nurses into the country. We absolutely need a digital and creative visa to plug skills gaps in these two vital industries. And I’m afraid we are going to need a construction visa as well, to enable the supply of the skilled workforce needed to roll out superfast fibre and all the other infrastructure projects for which the chancellor has announced new public expenditure.
The writer is the former Conservative MP for Stourbridge
