David Blackburn

Michael Fallon and Vince Cable join forces

Michael Fallon has given a pugnacious interview to the Sunday Telegraph. He said that Britain must end its obsession with the ‘politics of envy’ and celebrate wealth creators as ‘Olympian’. (I wonder what the minister makes of the Romford Business Awards, which are presented by his colleague Andrew Rosindell, the Conservative MP for Romford.)

As well as having venerated wealth, Fallon introduced several policy objectives: a new round of privatisation (Royal Mail being the first target), employment law reform to ease the dismissal of underperforming workers or where working relationships have collapsed, and a sustained attack on 3,000 regulations.

The Sunday Telegraph describes Fallon’s ideas as an ‘agenda pursued by Lady Thatcher’s government’; but, to this reader at least, Fallon seems to be operating within present coalition thinking. His employment law proposals seem to be an extension of what the Business Department has already

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