[The rumor is that the Britain lobbied EU to keep the arms embargo to China, so this is China's revenge?<g> Though have not read anything talked about this.]--"Rover and out
A strange and unfortunate end to a sad industrial saga"
It has been obvious for some time that MG Rover was more likely to collapse than to survive and thrive under a new owner. Even so, the dramatic end was more brutal and uncompromising than might have been anticipated. Those responsible for administering the ailing company are issuing redundancy notices and the Government has little option but to provide support for retraining. It is obviously a desperately sad moment for the Longbridge workforce, their families and those who rely in whole or in part on providing components for the company. That it has occurred in an election campaign has increased its salience.
This timing also means that questions will be asked about whether politics interfered with the normal process by which ministers would deal with a dying business. Michael Howard said yesterday that he wondered whether the Government should have been “involved earlier”. Others will contend that the Department of Trade and Industry involved itself far too early and the original mistake was the deal embraced by Stephen Byers, then the Trade and Industry Secretary, five years ago. That arrangement appears, in retrospect, to have bought the economy of the West Midlands extra time to prepare for Rover’s demise at the price of raising false hopes.
Unduly conspiratorial explanations for events should be avoided. Ministers and officials are instead vulnerable to the charge that they deluded themselves about the chances of the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) riding to their rescue. The full correspondence between that company and Whitehall is not available for scrutiny.
Yet the apparent tone of the final letter from SAIC appears to have been of a “When will you take ‘no’ for an answer?” character. In truth, although the MG brand name has appeal, it was never clear why the Chinese business might have needed MG Rover anything like as much as MG Rover plainly needed it.
An element of cultural and political misunderstanding may have been crucial. Tony Blair and others seem to have sought to woo the Chinese political leadership to perform on their behalf and place pressure on SAIC executives to do their bidding. If so, Whitehall must be one of the few places left that does not appreciate that modern China is not the command economy that it used to be. British business as a whole may learn something from this bruising exercise.
The package being prepared for the MG Rover workers does not appear to be unreasonable. A major programme of support would have occurred if a company of this nature and size had failed a few weeks after, rather than a few weeks before, a general election. If Mr Blair obtains a third term, nevertheless, he must ask himself whether the DTI is remotely plausible under its current political management. There is a very strong case not just for Patricia Hewitt to move on, but for most of her ministerial team to depart, and for the basic purpose of the department to be reconsidered. In its own way, it is as unroadworthy as MG Rover.
timesonline.co.uk |
