Osborne heavy on rhetoric, light on detail
GEORGE Osborne delivered his maiden speech to the Conservative Party conference as Chancellor of the Exchequer. TheBusinessDesk.com’s Marc Reeves gives his reaction.
ANYONE hoping for heavy hints or even a sneak peak into the detail of the Comprehensive Spending Review will have been disappointed by Chancellor George
Osborne’s keynote speech to the Tory Party conference in Birmingham.
And with the only headline-grabbing announcements concerning child benefit and total welfare payments for families, solid news to interest the business community was distinctly thin on the ground. In its place was rhetoric that only in part lived up to the speechwriters’ ambition of oratory.
First, with the coalition’s business secretary inconveniently belonging to another political party, the Conservatives had to wheel on the nation’s retailer-in-chief Sir Stuart Rose to ensure their business credentials were sufficiently underlined.
The M&S chairman warmed up the capacity crowd before Mr Osborne’s arrival with a homespun homily about how good business counted the pennies and prepared for a rainy day – just like the new Government was doing, he said.
Sir Stuart, after reassuring the PM that his local M&S branch stocked his size in socks, said: “I believe this coalition is doing the right thing. The real risk is delaying (public sector cuts) now and paying a much heavier price in the long term.”
Tatton MP Mr Osborne, turning Vince Cable’s understandable absence from the hall into his speech’s best joke, remarked on his relationship with the business secretary:
“People said we wouldn’t get on, that we’d trade cruel nicknames, that we would knife each other in the back, that we’d try to end each others’ careers . Who do they think we are? Brothers?”
Instead, he said, the George and Vince show was starting to open Britain for business again, citing his NI, capital gains and corporation tax changes as evidence.
Playing to an increasingly receptive audience, Mr Osborne became positively unctuous about the role of enterprise in the recovery, but not before staking out his claim to the moral high ground in the outrage he felt about disproportionate bankers’ bonuses.
“I want Britain to be the home of successful competitive and stable financial services,” he said, “but we will not allow money to flow unimpeded out of those banks into huge bonuses, if that means money is not flowing out in credit to the small businesses who did nothing to cause this crash and suffered most in it.”
But lest anyone be in any doubt about George’s allegiances, he spelled out his philosophy thus: “I believe in an aspirational economy. I believe in an enterprise economy. Yes, I believe in a capitalist economy.”
Business leaders in the hall seemed moderately buoyed up by Mr Osborne’s tone and delivery, but many left the ICC checking their diaries to ensure they had October 20 – CSR day – firmly circled in red.
