Tomorrow's Business Today
A banking PR stunt for the Tories
Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor with the surname broadcasters love to accidentally get wrong, has had an idea.
He plans to sell the 39% stake the government still owns in NatWest to retail investors this summer.
“It’s time to get Sid investing again”, he says, a reference to the Tell Sid TV adverts from 1986 when British Gas was floated.
Two thoughts here.
The first is that since we have paid for these shares once already when we bailed out what was then Royal Bank of Scotland in 2008, the notion of selling them to us really ticks me off.
These are ours already. What does he mean they are for sale? The very cheek of it.
Second, isn’t this a clear election/PR gift horse for a Tory Party desperately in need of either, or both, or anything at all.
Why not give every adult in Britain, say, 500 shares? Since NatWest is a proxy for the UK economy, the stock will grow as the country does.
The Tory dream of a share-owning democracy could come true at basically zero cost, since we’ve already given up hope of getting the £45 billion bailout money back.
When George Osborne was editor of the Evening Standard I ran this idea by him, and asked why he hadn’t done it as Chancellor, if only to offset his hated austerity policies.
His answer was sort of astonishing. They’d looked at it, he said, but there is no reliable record to use.
You mean, the government has no idea who lives here? Not really?
No, he said, while conceding it would be a jolly handy thing to have.
So, an easier plan. How about we keep close attention to everyone who is born here from now on.
Here you go Mrs Smith – a birth certificate to prove your son exists. And a share certificate in young Tommy’s name.
He can’t sell the shares till he is 21. Best of luck.
The nuances of this plan could be argued over until it was simple and enactable, but it surely can’t be beyond our collective wit to do it.
Jeremy Hunt is at this very moment pondering what to do about London’s moribund stock market and the fact that investors are shunning it.
One answer, the one I have just given, is staring him in the face
What’s not to like about that plan?
Press release of the day
Quite big news here from Channel 4, which says it plans to transform itself into a digital first public service streamer by 2030. (There will be job cuts too, of course).
Newspapers have been pretty much digital-first, public-service streamer for a while – broadcasters were bound to follow eventually.
Channel 4 says its strategy – dubbed Fast Forward – will “elevate its impact across the UK and stand out in a world of global entertainment conglomerates and social media giants”.
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