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Occasionally, a story comes along that obliges you to do a double-take. One such was the report yesterday that Sir Alan Sugar is being lined up by Labour insiders for the London mayoral race in four years' time.
Two aspects are striking about this. One is the idea of the grizzly, bullying Amstrad founder sitting in City Hall at all. What we see on The Apprentice, believe it or not, is the acceptable, sweeter face of "You're fired!"
Away from the camera, he swears like the proverbial trooper. Someone told me how he recently received a phone call from Sugar, a friend of his, saying that, yes, he would be sending him a charitable donation. "Alan was very generous but everything he said was laden with expletives," said the businessman, shaking his head at the memory.
Sugar is an impatient personality who doesn't mask what he is thinking. The notion of him working in City Hall, spending hours in tedious meetings, is simply laughable.
The second point about "Sugar for Mayor" is a bigger problem: business leaders in this country very rarely successfully translate into politics - or any form of public service, come to think of it. They're wanted because they're seen as high achievers, "can do" people who will get things done. But this hardly ever proves to be the case.
For example, in British business, few figures enjoy such standing as Archie Norman. The former Asda boss is credited with turning the chain into a supermarket heavyweight and for having spotted and nurtured the talent of an array of executives, who all went on to become stars in their own right, including Allan Leighton of the Royal Mail and Justin King of Sainsbury's.
Could Norman replicate that genius at Westminster, as the Tory MP for Tunbridge Wells? Could he heck. Admittedly, his timing was bad - he took up the political cudgels at the behest of his friend William Hague just as the party was heading for the electoral wilderness. But he says: "I was exasperated by the protocol and the lack of focus on achievement."
Norman wasn't a hit at Westminster. He was regarded as too honest about Tory failings and his sometimes abrasive delivery rubbed up his fellow MPs and party workers the wrong way. He was seen as arrogant, a clever-clogs. "In business, if you don't like things, you change them," says Norman. "You change the product, change the team, even change the market you're in. But in politics, you're swept along on a big tide and you're a small cork bobbing up and down in a big sea. When the tide goes out, you go with it."
The most well-known businessmanturned-politician of recent times was Michael Heseltine but within the Conservative firmament he was always regarded as a maverick and a one-off. He was not viewed as a strong team player - something he proved when he walked out of the Cabinet over the Westland affair, plunging his colleagues, led by Mrs Thatcher, into crisis.
Few cross the politicalmoneymaking divide as Heseltine and Norman did. The latter was the first FTSE-100 chairman to sit in the House of Commons and, says Norman, "I will almost certainly be the last." It is true, David Cameron was PR for Carlton TV and his shadow cabinet contains a sprinkling of those with business backgrounds. But none of them was exactly a titan. That is not the case behind the scenes, where luminaries such as Lords Saatchi and Ashcroft and Michael Spencer enjoy a great deal of influence among the Tory high command and Sir Ronnie Cohen and others fulfil similar roles for Labour.
Very few, however, go on to play a fulltime, frontline political role. Partly, it's the knowledge that frustration lies in wait. Partly it's that our business achievers tend to be lone operators. The prospect of Sir Richard Branson, for instance, who created and then ran a corporate empire in his own image, adapting his style to suit the greater need of a political party is inconceivable - he is more likely to stand as an independent than someone tied to a machine.
This is not so in the US, where moguls regularly go on to hold extremely high office - and do so successfully. Their business captains are much better shmoozers than ours. They grow up in a culture that is much more media-savvy, where the tools of the political trade, glad-handing, patting babies on the head and playing to the gallery, are regarded as the norm. For all their individuality, they're usually much more corporatist and team players - and crucially, more used to receiving external advice - than their British counterparts.
US society expects it. There, politics is portrayed as something to aspire to. In his autobiography, Michael Bloomberg, a hit as mayor of New York, says: " Politics, no matter what the cynical say, is a noble profession."
Bloomberg says he knows his limitations. "I have no interest in being a legislator. The pace, the focus and the compromises don't appeal to me. The legislative process is so boring that I'd last for all of five minutes as a senator or a congressman." Three jobs interest him, "mayor, governor or president".
Here, we like our senior politicians to have worked the hustings, knocked on doors, attended numerous constituency rubber chicken dinners and to have whiled away hours on the benches and in the committee rooms of Parliament.
In the US, too, they are used to their millionaires putting something back. Philanthropy is regarded as the duty of anyone who has made their fortune. From there, it is only a small step to becoming more involved in determining how the money is portioned, how the infrastructure is managed and shaped.
Every so often in the the UK, someone conjures up a Sugar to take the political helm. The name of Sir Terry Leahy of Tesco, for instance, is repeatedly linked to the task of running the NHS. It's speculation that is based on the fact his wife works in the health service but it's also founded on desperation - that where elected politicians and officials have failed, maybe Britain's number one retailer can sort out the NHS.
Leahy, like Sugar, is brilliant at stacking up profits, at driving staff and suppliers and attending to his customers and investors. Does that mean he is suited to a post like overseeing the NHS? Of course not. Put it another way, would Alan Johnson, the health secretary, make CEO of Tesco? It does not follow that just because someone is good at one job they can do another. How would Sugar have felt if someone said he should give way at Amstrad to Ken Livingstone? His riposte would tell you everything you need to know about the "Sugar for Mayor" campaign.
Reader views (1)
Good God. Tesco Value Vasectomies!
- The Vicar, Essex, 25/06/2008 13:04
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