Sunday press review
Boris vote fall-out + Luis Gallego + Bernard Arnault
Morning everyone, hope you are enjoying the weekend. Some thoughts on what I think is interesting in the Sunday papers below. Firstly, thank you to everyone who has been in touch with their own thoughts about the question posed in Friday’s newsletter, which looked at whether the media is too negative about business. The responses have been fascinating and I am gradually making my way through them all. If I haven’t replied to you yet, I will! Anyway, on to the Sunday review…
Tony Danker, director-general of the CBI, has gone public with criticism of the government. “Can we stop Operation Save Big Dog and instead start moving to action stations on the economy?” he tells Oliver Shah and The Sunday Times. Ouch. Many business leaders are saying similar or worse in private, so we shouldn’t be surprised that the head of Britain’s biggest business lobby group is saying this. Nonetheless, it is an “unusually frank intervention”, as the article says. Danker has been a thoughtful leader of the CBI, not prone to hyperbole. The article is here. On a similar note, John Caudwell, the founder of Phones4U and Conservative donor, has criticised Boris Johnson and some of the donors who signed a letter of support for the prime minister on Monday are now distancing themselves from it. That story is here.
It’s not business, but the Prince of Wales and Rwanda story is fascinating. The Times got a great hit on Saturday with its scoop that Prince Charles has been privately saying that the government’s policy of sending migrants to Rwanda is “appalling”. The story looked well-sourced, and tellingly, was not denied by Clarence House. Anyway, the follow-up stories today are really interesting. The Sunday Times quotes four (!) cabinet ministers who are unhappy with Prince Charles for meddling while The Mail on Sunday front page is stark: “We will not back down on Rwanda, Charles.” Stories are here and here. I am looking forward to seeing what Monday’s papers have in store. I suspect one angle will be the apparently poor relationship between Prince Charles and Boris Johnson. You can read more about that here.
The Sunday Times has interviewed Luis Gallego, the chief executive of IAG, owner of British Airways, about the chaos at airports. He has linked the problems to the furlough scheme ending too early in the UK compared to other countries. Interview here.
On the same topic, The Sunday Telegraph says the government is looking at issuing temporary visas to ease the staff shortages at airports. Story here.
Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, has written to the Competition and Markets Authority to call for an “urgent review” of the petrol station market. He wants the CMA to “increase the transparency that consumers have over prices” amid concerns that petrol stations are not passing on the cut in fuel duty. This is another sign that government is willing to intervene in markets if there are concerns that customers are getting ripped off. Sunday Telegraph story here.
Great get for the Sunday Telegraph. Celia Walden spoke to Bernard Arnault, the boss of LVMH, owner of Louis Vuitton, Tiffany, Dom Perignon and many other luxury brands. Arnault is one of the richest people in the world, perhaps the richest depending on when and what you measure. On the subject of which member of the family will succeed him (there is a Succession-style dynamic to who follows the 73-year-old) he says: “With my kids it was always a case of ‘if you want to work with me, then you need to have good training’. But above all you need to want to. If they had preferred to do something else, that would have been absolutely fine. There’s nothing worse than working out of obligation, but they all do it out of genuine desire.” There are also some great nuggets in there about how to run a business. The interview is here.
One last thing for today, The Sunday Times has done a list of the 50 best documentaries to watch. The reader comments below are also worth going through for some other documentaries that should be on the list. The Last Dance, Free Solo, and the BBC’s superb Blair & Brown series would have made my list, for what it’s worth. The list is here.
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Graham