Richard Lambert

MARKET FUNDAMENTALISM MAY BE DEAD, BUT IT WON'T LIE DOWN.

The CBI's Richard Lambert speaks out against state involvement in industry.

The author is old enough to remember another era when Britain was suffering under the yoke of statist Socialism. In the early 1970's, at the height of the central planning disasters, with the IMF circling, a committed Socialist called Norman Atkinson was asked what he would do to arrest the UK's decline. "Why", said he placidly, "Its quite clear, we just need a little more planning". Luckily Mr Atkinson did not have his way and the country veered towards the free market - and then lurched violently towards market fundamentalism, when the state was pushed out of economic life and virtually unregulated markets led to the present disasters.
Now we have a problem of similar ilk - what to do about a dogma that has been allowed to go too far. But, we also seem to have a new generation of Norman Atkinsons.

Take for example Richard Lambert, Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry, the employers' body that has overseen the collapse of UK technology industries and failed to foresee the collapse of the financial markets with its dreadful consequences for UK industry and jobs; has just sounded off against any government support for the beleaguered motor industry. Quoted in The Times, Mr Lambert said: "I don't think that any of us want to get into a world where the government is deciding which sectors are going to flourish and which sectors are not. Our job as an industry-wide body is to say lets get the markets working......."
Mr Lambert fails to touch on the fact that his predecessors in the CBI lay back and watched the markets destroy almost the entire UK technology and manufacturing sectors, which passed into the hands of companies from countries that valued success and competitiveness rather than sterile dogmas.

The fatal flaws in Mr. Lambert's understanding

What UK neo-liberals fail to appreciate is that the US, with the UK supposedly the other seat of free-market fundamentalism, is in reality a highly pragmatic and protectionist nation that will abandon free-market dogmas at the drop of a hat if it is thought to benefit US citizens. They also ignore the fact that the UK government has just performed the biggest bail-out of private industry in history, ironically as a result of the disasters caused by the fundamentalist creed that Mr. Lambert and his like seem to support.

But most important of all, market fundamentalists are so blinded by their anti-government dogmas that they are incapable of learning from the highly successful examples of other nations. Only the British have got a binary mindset - its either government control or private markets, there are no other models that might combine what the state can offer in collaboration with the market.
They should be forced to study the examples of the Nordic countries, and many technologically successful Asian nations until they can demonstrate an understanding that the most successful economies and societies are based on collaboration, not red-in-tooth-and-claw individualistic selfishness. They might also be required to consider why collaborative models create far better societies, with less inequality, better education, better health, less crime without sacrificing innovation and a high standard of living.
We are not proposing handing industrial development over to party politicians, we have seen how stupid and inept they can be. But there are better ways than the unfettered free market, which has proven to be equally stupid.
We need a proper evidence-based exploration of how the state and representatives of industry, employees, community and the research community can collaborate in order to regenerate UK industry - especially technology.

Obviously the CBI, led by Mr Lambert, is not interested in exploring better ways of developing a healthy economy in a wholesome society.