James Hurley on political careerists and evidence of some much-needed green shoots for AIM.
It’s natural to want to take a step back and look for alternative interpretations when a media bandwagon is in full sway, so it wasn’t surprising that we started to hear something other than rage and opprobrium about the expenses debacle last week.
In the Financial Times, Philip Stephens sensibly, if predictably, argued that the expenses story owes more to media frenzy than any sincere sense of public outrage. “MPs [shouldn’t] earn only an average wage,” he wrote. “Being an MP ought surely to pay as much as a GP or a secondary school teacher.”
Matthew Gwyther, editor of Management Today, made a similar point in his blog: “The MPs' stipend of sixty-three grand a year wouldn’t persuade a GP, small-town solicitor or even middle-to-upper-ranking social worker to get out of bed in the morning.
“If you regard being a Member of Parliament as an important role in society – which I do – you have you pay them properly. You cannot make them fiddle – within the daft existing rules – to gather together a proper wage. It’s a bad system.”
Good points well made, but for my mind, Stephens’ concession that “being an MP is a public service and should not be a way to become rich” undermines this argument. While £63,000 sounds a lot when compared with the average wage, it probably isn’t adequate for a professional with the pressures and responsibilities of an MP if it’s the sole source of income. Of course, it really shouldn’t be, and even when dodgy expense claims are ignored, rarely is.
The suggestion that the basic salary is inadequate assumes a careerist approach to politics that so many find frustrating. The MPs who’ve already achieved what they want to for themselves - perhaps as entrepreneurs, for example - will generally have made their money and should have little interest in feathering their nests when acting as public servants.
For them, the basic salary and an honourable use of the expenses allowance will be compensation enough. (As an aside, most small business owners and lobbyists wish there were more MPs with extensive private sector experience so there would be a better understating of, and more sympathy for, the wealth-creation process.)
However, £63,000 must feel like scant reward for a rampant careerist who’s never worked outside of the political system and is a long term employee of the executive. Integrity, after all, isn’t going that cheap.
In my own blog last week, I wrote about the future of AIM. It seems I was one week early with my assessment.
The market’s observers suggested it would take a successful IPO to improve liquidity and inject some much needed cash into under-funded companies, and now, Max Property, a new property investment company backed by entrepreneur Nick Leslau and hedge fund Och-Ziff is planning a £200m flotation.
It’s Europe’s first major IPO of 2009, and boy is it much-needed. Leslau said the company intends "to exploit current weakness of the UK real-estate market" and will invest in property over five years. Here’s hoping the listing is successful and that the deal sparks wider interest in small-caps, many of which surely represent good value in a depressed market.