Frumpy, out of date and not much fun – Gordon Brown and BHS go together in more ways than one. A word needs to be put in about the role of the former Chancellor and Prime Minister in the collapse of the chain store this week.
Dominic Chappell – who must win this year’s business brass-neck award by attempting to buy back BHS days after it collapsed into administration with him at the helm — was perhaps not the kind of entrepreneur that Gordon Brown had in mind in 2001 when he published a white paper, Enterprise for All, which led to the 2002 Enterprise Act. But intentionally or not, he was one who benefitted from Brown’s attempts to de-stigmatise bankruptcy. Brown’s argument was that insolvency laws were holding back risk-takers. At the time, bankruptcy tended to last between two and three years.
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