Five things we learnt: Meet The Editor with James Astill

Wednesday 15th April

Pagefield was lucky enough to host James Astill, Political Editor of The Economist in the latest instalment of our Meet The Editor series.  An award winning journalist and author, James was appointed Political Editor and Bagehot columnist in 2012.

James joined The Economist as International Security Editor in 2004, filing copy from across the globe, before moving to Delhi in 2007 to cover the South Asia beat. He returned to London in 2011 to take up the Energy and Environment Editorship, before moving to his current role.

James spoke about the current state of British politics to some of Pagefield’s friends and clients and shared some of his thoughts about the role of business in public life.

Here are five things we learnt from the breakfast:

Political Leadership

James noted that context is absolutely essential when talking about political leadership. Thatcher and Blair came to power in a socio-economic environment that permitted a leader to pursue a particular strategy. The global recession that has plagued our current crop of leaders has hugely stymied the effectiveness of any ‘visionary’ politics and we live in a different age. Despite being good communicators many of our party leaders get a raw deal from the public in attempting to manage what is an unmanageable situation – or at least one that has many other factors at play than just their ‘vision’. That said, he noted that it would be hard to argue that, for all their flaws, the SNP and UKIP don’t have a vision for how they see the country in the future.

Gravitas v Apathy

While there may be a perceived lack of gravitas amongst our political leaders, the context in which Cameron, Clegg and Miliband are operating is profoundly different to their predecessors. Gone are the days of the PM with a distinguished military career like Harold Macmillan.  Voters however are, in their apathy and their assumption that all politicians are the same, missing the fact that there is a substantial choice next month. He went on to note that he was particularly impressed at the abilities of the Labour Party’s 2010 intake.

‘Red’ Ed and Business

It is a common misconception that business supported New Labour before their 1997 election success and the post-97 era is evidence that businesses will ultimately ‘get along’ with whoever is in power. He added that Ed Miliband is wrong that the public mood of the country has taken a noticeable leftward shift and that Britain is still ‘small c conservative’ but simply, James said, businesses will be able to tolerate a left-leaning government.

Business and the EU

Conversely, James found it remarkable that businesses were being as ‘complacent’ as they are over the potential EU referendum promised by the Conservatives and he accused Cameron of being ‘recklessly tactical’ in his toying with Britain’s future in the EU. While wary of businesses being too political, James said it is important that CEOs make their views heard on issues of significant national interest, as pro-union businesses eventually did in the weeks approaching the Scottish independence referendum (a subject about which they had also been very complacent).

Britain in the World

International affairs appear to be on the backburner for both Cameron and Miliband, and they are almost thankful when pressing domestic issues crop up.  Cameron, he suggested, is simply disinterested in foreign policy and under his leadership we have seen an acceleration of Britain’s retreat from world leadership, largely led by the game of brinkmanship that the Prime Minister has been playing with the EU and the absence of honouring the NATO commitment to defence spending of 2% GDP. Ed Miliband equally is said to “not do abroad”. The respective appointments of Philip Hammond and Douglas Alexander (also Labour’s election chief) to the foreign briefs of either party speaks volumes, he added.

 

 

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