More Gruel? Away, Lad...

 

Further to last night's post, I'm watching the rather sparsely-attended debate on the Tata deal in the Commons, this afternoon. As usual, the critical question goes unasked. The nature of this deal, taken on 'behalf' of its investors - the UK taxpayers - in camera and presented as a fait accompli done deal without consultation with the principles directly affected by it, i.e. the UK taxpayers, the population of Wales, and the industry's workers and their unions, is spun & presented to all as a 'job preservation' and greening exercise, without any mention of a return on our investment in the future. The question therefore - as yet unspoken - is precisely what shareholding we should expect to hold as a country, as we are stumping up approximately one third of the cost of the project: where's our return on our investment?

The nature of any normal business deal is that the stakeholders invested in a venture own that shareholding and rightly expect a commensurate share of any future dividends generated, until such shareholding is sold or otherwise relinquished at its then current market value. We shouldn't have to beg or legislate for what is legitimately ours in the first place: if this was a legitimate and normal business contract, we would have the right to demand our return on investment. That right is being withheld by this government, which routinely administers our public finances in that timeless and tiresome patrician fashion beloved of the right. For the party of business and economic restraint, they don't understand business, how economies work, or the people. 

How is it that a government and Conservative party so viscerally opposed to giving our youth grant-aid to study, is quite OK with the concept of grant aid to foreign businesses in return for local job cuts? To top it all, the woeful Liz Truss is still trotting out the same guff in defence of her - mercifully short - tenure at number ten, espousing across-the-board tax cuts and the further dismembering of social funding. Not only would she estrange a large part of her own electoral demographic these days, who are now far poorer due to Conservative mismanagement of the economy, but she puts at risk the economy itself, by taking more and more people out of meaningful economic participation. Genius.