The ambiguity of the woke businessman

The woke businessman, like the woke prince and princess, is an ambiguous figure. Being woke, after all, involves a contempt for profits and big business, as for social hierarchy. I first noticed this uneasy phenomenon many years ago when I attended a lunch in the City at which Paul Polman, the then chief executive of Unilever, read us a moralistic lecture about European integration, greenery and how ‘I agree with Mahatma Gandhi: you must be the change you want to see in the world’. I found it intensely annoying to be told how to be good by someone much richer than myself. Last year, the change Mr Polman wanted to see of moving Unilever’s HQ from London to Rotterdam failed, and he was out. Now his successor, Alan Jope, is using a similar patter. He is keen on what he calls ‘purpose’ in brands, by which he seems to mean persuading young people that things his company makes are virtuous.