Courtesy of Mish.
UK prime minister Theresa May is on a roll, in more than one direction.
She wants the bank of England to stop QE; she wants to put an end to “irresponsible capitalism”; she chastised CEO pay; and she is after tax dodging companies.
May is also firmly behind Brexit and a supporter of government spying.
Irresponsible Capitalism
May says she is ‘coming after’ tax-dodging companies, and puts irresponsible capitalism ‘on warning’
Theresa May criticised irresponsible behaviour by big business and put the housing, energy and broadband industries on notice for radical reforms in a speech that prompted comparisons with Ed Miliband, the former Labour leader.
In a speech steeped in rhetoric about the role of the government to bear down on irresponsible capitalism, the prime minister said she would tackle “unfairness” wherever she found it, from tax evasion to high household energy bills.
The government would be “coming after” tax-dodging companies and their advisers.
The prime minister repeated her plans to shake up corporate governance in UK boardrooms by putting worker and consumer representatives on boards, introducing annual binding pay votes and making companies publish pay ratios.
Among those “put on warning” by the prime minister was “a household name that refuses to work with the authorities even to fight terrorism”.
Social media sites have been accused by the authorities of failing to combat the use of their sites to promote terrorism. The Commons home affairs committee recently criticised social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for “consciously failing” to prevent the use of their sites to promote radicalisation.
Mrs May also criticised an unknown “director who takes out massive dividends while knowing that the company pension is about to go bust”, a rich boss who did not look after his staff and an international company that treated tax laws as an “optional extra”.
MPs have issued reports in recent months criticising the behaviour of both Sir Philip Green, the retail tycoon, and Mike Ashley, the owner of Sports Direct.
Sir Philip held BHS from 2000 until 2015 when it was sold for £1 to Retail Acquisitions, a consortium of investors. The collapse of the business this year became acutely political thanks to concerns about the BHS pension deficit of £571m.
Sir Philip took the dividends when the pension fund was still in surplus. But a joint report by two Commons committees, for business and for work and pensions, claimed he had “systematically extracted hundreds of millions of pounds” from BHS. He had enriched himself and his family while “leaving the company and its pension fund weakened to the point of the inevitable collapse of both”.
Mr Ashley was accused by MPs of presiding over almost “Victorian” working conditions at a Sports Direct warehouse in the Midlands.
Mrs May’s comments came just hours after George Freeman, head of her policy board in Downing Street, warned of “anti-capitalist riots” if the government did not urgently reform the economic system — including with a more muscular state. “We have got to have capitalism working more in partnership with the state,” he told a fringe event. “Responsible capitalism is completely essential if we are going to tackle the social justice agenda.”
Change is Coming
Theresa May’s says ‘A change is going to come’.
