CITY AND SUBURBAN
Jam all round for the CBI, and scrape for its guest
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
What I enjoy about the Confedera- tion of British Industry is its insistence on jam for all sides of its bread. It wants cheaper money, and puts on a regular double act with the Chancellor, who tells it that a better way to cut costs would be to pay less in wages. It wants a competitive exchange rate (almost as good as having competitive companies), and when sterling shows signs of strength is always the first to squawk. It has also decided that it wants us to join the European Monetary System, and its new president, David Nickson, the brewer from Scottish & Newcastle, has lost no time in writing this onto his shopping- list. So the CBI deems that we must keep the pound steady, but we must also keep it competitive, and once it competes (that is, falls) to the point where the rules require us to defend it, we must not use the first line of defence, which is dearer money. Surely the CBI's economists are not among that happily deluded band who believe that joining the system would bring interest rates down — on the theory that sterling would then need no protection, or, if it did, that we could leave all of that to the Germans? Mr Nickson, pressing such argu- ments on the Prime Minister, who is the principal point of resistance, will not have been helped by the reception which his members gave her at their grand annual dinner. Ever since Sir Terence Beckett bared his knuckles to her, relations have been polite rather than affable. Now she was their guest of honour — almost cer- tainly her last appearance in that role before the election. She gave them a rallying cry, and they noticeably did not all rush at once. She gave them cues: some were taken, some were left, in spite of vigorous cheerleading efforts on the part of Denis Thatcher. It was instructive. Minis- ters now have the economy (as distinct from the rate of employment) low down on their worry lists — an unusual luxury for British governments, and in its way an achievement. The CBI, though, was plain- ly suspending its political judgment. Perhaps its members were working on B. olingbroke's maxim that gratitude is a lively sense of favours to come.
Previous page
