That will be the inevitable response within most of the Labour party to the imminent departure of Lord Jones of Birmingham, former head of the CBI.
One of the “goats” (non-partisan ministers in the, ahem, ‘government of all the talents’) hired last summer by Gordon Brown, he was hardly an outright success.
Seen as a natural Tory, he wouldn’t join Labour or even pretend to back many of its policies. Most strikingly, he carried on opposing the minimum wage – years after most business leaders had given up this fight. (Bear in mind that the CBI predicted 100s of 1000s of job losses from the original measure, which turned out to be nonsense).
Jones carried on driving a Jaguar – while the cabinet debated driving green vehicles and Mr Brown persistently talked the talk about electric cars.
And he refused to tone down the outspoken, bluff persona. At a gathering of Arab businessmen, he said: “We don’t care what colour you are, we don’t care if we can’t pronounce your names . . . we just want you to invest in our country.”
And then there was the FT interview where he single-handedly undermined the new tax on non-doms, prompting the first of several damaging fiscal U-turns by Alistair Darling.
We already knew Lord Jones was stepping down before the next general election; now he says he will quit later this year. He is no doubt a “character” and admirable in many respects. But did he ever belong in a Labour government?
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey
