The pieces of legislation which define the economic governance of the UK came shortly after the war; the Companies Act, and the component parts of the Welfare State. Will Hutton has understood neither of them.
Instead, he believes that society operates on a system of 'stakeholders'. that is to say that if you buy shares, say, one hundredth of a percent of a company, you are not entitled to one hundredth of a percent of it, because there are other people who have an interest, too: trades unions, local governments, whatever. Hutton saw no separation between ownership and involvement. In fact he failed completely to understand the capitalist system.
Hutton naturally asssociated himself with the loopier element of the Labour Party after 1997, the group of sycophantic pseudo intellectuals surrounding Tony Blair who were there to give credence to his absurd, and failed, 'third way' concept. Blair liked these guys because they meant he didn't have much explaining to do. Hutton wrote for the Guardian and headed up the Work Foundation.
Here is Hutton on Gordon Brown, writing in 2004
'His economic forecasts prove more accurate than those of his self-righteous and near permanently wrong critics. It is boring that brick by tedious brick he is laying the foundations of an economy and society that copies Scandinavia's successes as much as those of the US. And it is infuriating that the predictions that his sums will end in a terrifying black hole never come true.'
How pleased he must be with that statement now.
Now, incredibly, David Cameron has offered Hutton a job, working out how much public sector workers should be paid. It's like asking Cheryl Cole for her opinions on Rousseau.
If Cameron is ever going to make a change to this country, if he is ever going to get the Conservatives into power on their own, if he is ever going to defend us against these charlatans coming back to power, he must get out and denounce the intellectually bankrupt basis of their governance. Not give them jobs.
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