Letters From A Tory Daily views on British politics and the Conservative Party from a centre-right thinker who writes letters on his blog to politicians, journalists and many others.

Dear Peter Mandelson,

What a feeling.  What a wonderful feeling.  I bet you can’t get enough of this.  After being cast into the political wilderness for so many years as EU Trade Commissioner (and failing miserably at that), your dramatic return to British politics has put both your hands firmly on the levers of the British economy.  Unfortunately, your cold and calculating mind never had any intention of doing what’s best for this country.  The only prize in your eyes is getting Labour re-elected to help maintain your own personal grip on the levers of power and the ongoing bailout saga is playing right into your hands.

We’ve all heard the ‘government does not have an open cheque book’ routine, and of course this is true.  I would hope that this translates as ‘it is not the responsibility of government to prop up every single industry during a recession’, but it is now becoming clear that the correct translation is ‘we will help those industries that will help us politically’.  Woolworths meant nothing to you, save for making the unemployment figures a bit worse.  MFI suffered a similar fate.  Neither stores had a disproportionate presence in Labour heartlands so, despite their obvious economic value in terms of jobs and family incomes, they were not worth saving.  Sadly for them, these firms were not on your list of ‘winners’ drawn up by your government department.  Luckily for the car industry, you have deemed them worth saving.  While you appear to have ruled out taking shares in ailing manufacturers, you are still considering short-term loans or loan guarantees because the banks have cut back on their lending.  No doubt the unions and car manufacturers are extremely nervous about what your final decision will be, but as Labour have conclusively proved thus far in this recession, when votes are at stake the government will always come running.  I read in the Independent today that property developers are the latest group to go running to the US Treasury in desperate need of extra financing, and I wonder how long it will be before the same is repeated on this side of the Atlantic.

But wait.  Things are not quite as they seem.  This loan guarantee scheme sounds an awful lot like the Conservative policy of a national loan guarantee scheme put forward several weeks ago in improve liquidity in the financial markets.  Is this yet another policy theft by Gordon Brown?  Why is it that Jaguar Land Rover has been at the heart of speculation about financial assistance when so many other car firms are in difficulty?  Why is the Chief Executive of Jaguar Land Rover telling the papers today that you are discussing “access to financing for wholesale and retail and a stimulus for demand in the market place to minimise further sales decline”?  If people aren’t buying cars then there is nothing the government can do about it, save for wasting millions of taxpayers’ pounds pretending that you can do something about it.  What is this “stimulus in demand” that he was referring to?  The unions claim that the car industry needs supporting because of the supply chain being at stake, almost as if Woolworths and MFI didn’t have huge supply chains that you since evaporated.  Ah, my apologies.  I forgot for a moment that you’re not interested in the economics of all this, despite being our most senior business official in the country.  This is about safeguarding jobs if and when Labour senses that their core vote is at risk.  Jaguar Land Rover isn’t even owned by a British company, but the votes of all their workers still matter to you. 

You are relishing playing god in our economy with every industry coming begging to you, giving you free reign over who you help and how you help them.  Your mortgage assistance programme, cynically announced a couple of weeks ago to knock the Damian Green story off the front pages, was designed to make sure that the middle class owed you something at the next election (although your plan seems to have slipped into the wilderness as the reality of what you proposed became clear).  Your taste for public ownership is being well and truly satisfied and just like Gordon Brown, your overriding concern is now to make as many people ‘grateful’ for government intervention as possible before the next election so you can cash in your political chips just before polling day – ‘look who we saved, look how much you owe us’ will be the cry from the government.  It’s sick, it’s wrong and you deserve no credit for what you are doing - not because saving faltering companies is always wrong, but because you are doing it for all the wrong reasons.

Yours in disgust,

A.Tory