Bernard Looney and the sinister policing of office romances

I doubt whether many people will feel a pang of sympathy for Bernard Looney, former chief executive of BP who has just resigned over his failure to fully disclosure historic relationships with fellow employees. Perhaps he should have resigned last year when he declared proudly that high oil prices had turned BP into a ‘cash machine’ – a remark which hastened the imposition of a windfall tax which the industry may come bitterly to regret the next time oil prices crash. Yet the remark didn’t do Looney much personal harm – his pay was doubled last year to over £4 million. He will have a pretty decent pension, too, to go off and spend more time on his love life.

Yet something makes me rather uneasy about Looney’s downfall. Is it really the business of the BP board to poke its nose into the personal relationships of its employees? It used to be accepted that people who worked together would ask each other out and might even end up getting married.