Thinking about the news 5

The headline story for 1/4/15 (excellent timing) is that business leaders support the Conservatives. The detail is more revealing.

The IoD claims that it has 34,500 members; the letter to the Conservatives was signed by 100 business leaders. But even all directors have no greater knowledge of what is good for the economy and country than an average person. Their expertise, such as it is, is likely to be in running companies, not in economic policy, foreign affairs, welfare, healthcare or any other big issue. The association of business with the economy, and business interests with the national interest, is the real story here. It’s simply not a direct correlation.

People who own businesses, and probably receive most of their income from the business, will of course want corporate tax rates to go down and less onerous regulation. But consumer and worker protection aren’t designed to protect business profits (the clue is in the names). Similarly, life would be wonderful if everyone else could pay taxes but not me. But taxes need to be levied, and corporations currently pay just under £40bn in corporation tax. That sounds like a lot, until you realise that income tax and national insurance raise £259bn etc. Corporations are very good at whining, but the figures tell a different story.

I could go on, about how the Conservatives have dropped the main rate of corporation tax, paid by large companies, whilst Labour's business campaign is focussing on the fact that they are promising to support small companies, who pay the small company rate. So the Conservatives are supporting mostly enormous businesses that are well-established and need no extra help, whereas Labour is merely making promises that it probably won't keep, or at best won't implement effectively. Dropping the main rate of corporation tax is an excellent way of helping the rich without doing anything for anyone who might actually need it.

One could call the story simply '100 people want to pay less tax', but that misses the question of why such a story became a headline. Many news stories are actually quite boring when you clean up the message. Why they became the stories is often the subtle message that proves interesting.

Why should we listen to business leaders? Politicians regard their support as useful, which it no doubt is, but it is strange that we trust the people who screw the economy up. There have been many news stories about businesses and business leaders avoiding tax, contributing to the financial crisis, taking shortcuts with safety and so on, yet we don’t associate this with their support for a party.
Instead there is the unspoken belief that businessmen know what's best for the economy; that their knowledge and intentions are somehow altruistic, even though at the same time we know that the purpose of business is to make money, not help others (and only a few of us believe that the two can be done well together).
It is the narcissism of these 100 businessmen, their arrogance in interfering with the election, and the public and media's trust in their judgement, that we ought to be considering.