The war of words that has erupted between the former Post Office chair and Kemi Badenoch is a welcome example of character, writes Simon Neville
“Fuck business” was the response from Boris Johnson when pressed on corporate concerns over a hard Brexit six years ago – and business hasn’t forgotten.
Back in 2016, at least 90 per cent of business leaders were adamant that Brexit would be a bad idea. They warned about the impact on jobs, the hit to the economy and the extra red tape required.
At the forefront of the push to remain in the EU was the Confederation of British Industry and it was noticeable how the Venn diagram of politicians cheering its near demise last year
and those who were the most ardent Leave supporters formed an almost perfect circle.
Today, businesses remain scarred by the ferocity with which the victorious Leave side attacked those who questioned their promised utopia. The mauling of former retail darling Lord Stuart Rose, for example, left many of them silent.
Supermarkets feared they would alienate shoppers, airlines worried travellers would book elsewhere and pub groups ran scared at the thought the industry’s face of the Leave side – Wetherspoon’s Tim Martin – would come after them.
That silence remains to this day for many in the business world. Boardrooms may have changed, but the culture of fear remains strong. Why make a sound when bonuses will still get paid?
But a mere eight years later, some business leaders are remembering what “leadership” means — most notably the former Post Office chairman Henry Staunton, whose intervention in the Sunday Times on the weekend sent shockwaves through Westminster.
In it, he claimed the government had told him to delay payments to subpostmasters caught up in the Horizon scandal so the Conservatives could “limp into the next election”.
The 75-year-old former WH Smith chair – who was headhunted for the Post Office job in 2022 – said he faced interference from ministers in reforming the discredited brand, in an interview which undid much of the fine work the Tories had done in trying to redirect the blame for the scandal to anyone but themselves.
And you know what? I believe him. From speaking to sources at the Sunday Times, it sounds like Staunton wants to head off into retirement. He has no skin in the game and for someone who has spent most of their career quietly plugging away working the C-suite circuit, to speak out now seems like the move of a man looking to set the record straight in a dignified manner. Compare that to the bombastic, potentially libellous, overtures of business secretary Kemi Badenoch and it seems clear which side is more rattled by the spat.
The hope now must be that the intervention by a veteran businessman is the start of something bigger, rather than an anomaly from a retiree looking forward to spending his sizeable pension.
I’ve written before about how business leaders need to show character and speak up for the interests of their entire industries, instead of sticking to their silos and trotting out well-rehearsed lines polished of any meaning by overly zealous PRs. Occasionally they will. More often, they won’t.
Staunton may have walked away from the boardrooms that made him. But let’s hope those who remain can see his intervention for what it is – a rare sign of leadership.