CENTRE POINT
Her Majesty's fiscal policy is reduced to the tactics of a Damon Runyon gangster
SIMON JENKINS
The Evening Standard headline was stark: 'I Feel No Guilt Says Fat Cat'. The obese feline in question was hardly a public figure. He was David Jefferies, the chief of the National Grid, onto whose head is falling some £2 million of cash over the corning year. This includes a £190,000 windfall from a post-privatisation flotation of his company.
Many years ago, Mr Jefferies had the wisdom to become an electrical engineer, not a plumber or a builder or a railwayman. He thus joins colleagues in the gas and water businesses as a Midas of our age. All he touches turns to gold. Yet, as Midas found, gold does not bring eternal happi- ness. Mr Jefferies has become enmeshed in a horticultural folly rare in his part of Vir- ginia Water. It is known as a moral maze.
Here he has encountered Her Majesty's swarthy Energy Minister, Tim Eggar. Mr Eggar represents the Government which, five years ago, gave Mr Jefferies his chance of loot in one of the shabbier incidents of post-war politics. This was the cut-price sale of the utility monopolies in the late 1980s, in the hope that new shareholders would thank the Tory party for the result- ing windfall gains. The shareholders were indeed delighted and said thank you. But there are few free lunches, even in politics. As the new companies' directors pocketed lavish profits from the Government's undervaluing of the shares, the public became upset. When the public is upset, it behoves Mr Eggar to be upset on its behalf.
The result last week was a bizarre chap- ter in the history of political ethics. Mr Eggar summoned Mr Jefferies with three of his colleagues. Damon Runyan can best tell the tale. Eggar is pleading with Jefferies to return the loot. It was all a big mistake. The money belongs to someone else, name- ly the public. Jefferies says, You gave it me fair and square back in 1990, when you had a spot of bother over the election bribe. I hear on the street that the public is none too happy with you these days. That's your problem. No deal.
At this point Jefferies draws close to Eggar and murmurs in his ear, Wait your turn, Eggar. I tell you there are more spon- dulicks in this jug of gravy than you could wave a White Paper at. Ask Walker, ask Wakeham, ask Parkinson. Just cool it. Eggar cools it. What is a billion pounds between friends? he says to himself. These handouts are all cost-free wealth. Like North Sea oil, they are pure gain, winners without losers, theft without victims. They are Maggie's mint. He accepts the £50, knocks it off next spring's retail price index and tells Joe Public that he has cut a mean deal with a tough guy.
To such tactics is Her Majesty's fiscal policy reduced.
Of all the deadly sins, greed is the one that most seldom speaks its name. Like lust, it makes the world go round and its downside is left to theologians. Left- wingers once exploited the politics of greed as the converse of the politics of envy. The purpose of government was equitable wel- fare redistribution. Unearned income was dirty, even when gained through savings and risk. It was taxed at 98 per cent. In the 1970s, Sir Edward Heath described the conspicuous consumption of perks and share options as the 'unacceptable face of capitalism' and won the plaudits of a righ- teously indignant nation. Greed was a pub- lic vice.
It is now a public virtue. From the 'Tell Sid' campaign of early privatisation to the National Lottery's 'It could be you', the image of the modern elector is of a punter who has won a jackpot. John Major's archetypal Briton is standing on a podium, hysterical spouse at his side, spraying cham- pagne into the air. What was unacceptable to Heath is meat and drink to modern Toryism. Mr Major's proffered dream is not just of unearned income but of income unimagined, incredible and probably devas- tating. It is available to anybody lucky enough to win shares in a utilities ballot or scratch the right number on a lottery card. Marxism's labour theory of value has van- ished in a puff of Anthea Turner. True riches, says the Government, come not to hard work but to good luck. Such winnings are not even taxed. In modern Britain, only hard work is taxed. Serious money grows on trees and you get to keep it all.
What is remarkable about Mr Eggar's exchange with Mr Jefferies is that when this business turns sour he pleads ethics. The public is supposed to say, 'Lucky old Jef- feries, winning the utilities lottery like that. It shows how privatisation works.' Instead, the public is shocked at anyone walking off with money that he neither risked nor earned. Mr Eggar suddenly appeals to Mr Jefferies' gratitude, his generosity, his bet- ter nature or, failing all that, his sense of shame. When Mr Jefferies says 'Get lost', Mr Eggar and the Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke, leak their dismay, as if they would not dream of keeping such windfalls them- selves. I await Mr Eggar's future career with interest. Perhaps he and Kenneth Clarke mean to set up as freelance Cistercians.
To be sure, the utilities directors are 'greedy'. We all know how options, perks and bonuses are awarded: they are de facto gifts to oneself. Nobody 'needs' this kind of money, nor in a rigged monopoly is it any kind of free market return to labour or cap- ital. Some might consider such greed a sin. I prefer to call it luck. Mr Jefferies might have entered another branch of engineer- ing on which fortune has not shone. He chose lucky.
The person who cannot call him sinful is Mr Eggar. Mr Eggar is custodian of a wel- fare state so expensive that it can no longer be supported out of normal taxation, but must apparently rely on asset sales and lot- teries to meet its bills. Some individuals have become fortuitously rich as a result. Mr Eggar has singled out Mr Jefferies for excoriation. This is unfair. Why not sum- mon Camelot's next multimillion-pound winner and plead with him also to give his money back?
Simon Jenkins writes for the Times.
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