You can see what Ed Miliband was trying to do. As his party isn’t trusted on the
economy (his number one problem) he had to say how much he admires business. But, then again, his party is bankrolled by unions who dislike capitalists. So, Ed Miliband draws a dividing line: the
‘predator’ companies (bad) and companies like Rolls Royce, for example, and presumably small businesses (good). Here is the new narrative of his leadership: Miliband vs
Predator, coming to a cinema near you.
But just like Cameron’s ‘runaway dads’, the concept of a predator company is easier to talk about in the abstract than in real life. Just what is a bad company? Asset strippers fulfil a decent economic function: if a company goes bust, being an amalgamation of lots of companies assembled by a lunatic boss, then it is of great economic service to allocate these resources more effectively.
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