Let’s resist the Corbynist mob and celebrate corporate capitalism

A reader in the FTSE boardroom world told me sternly the other day that I should resist the temptation to join the Corbynist mob and most of today’s media in sniping at corporate capitalism, and instead celebrate its positive achievements. So, here’s a parable designed to do just that. 

The Kensington Aldridge Academy is a state-of-the-art secondary school that opened in 2014 next to Grenfell Tower in North Kensington, and now has 960 pupils. ‘Aldridge’ refers to a charitable foundation created by Sir Rod Aldridge, the multimillionaire former chairman of the outsourcing giant Capita, to sponsor schools with a special focus on entrepreneurship. Some locals resented the school being built on green space that served Grenfell residents, and some anti-capitalists no doubt resented the Aldridge-Capita connection — a fortune made from outsourcing being in their eyes an ill-gotten gain from public sector shrinkage. But the school itself swiftly won praise from the Department for Education and elsewhere as a worthy example of the academy model, and has achieved a first set of excellent AS-level results.