Political hand-wringing doesn't fill Christmas hampers
I was invited on BBC radio recently and introduced as a "former leading PR expert". As a former expert (and current ignoramus), my view was being sought on the collapse of Swindon-based Farepak, a Christmas-hamper operation that had gone down the pan along with the Christmas aspirations of some 150,000 savers.
Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) was being fingered as the Scrooge of this scenario, having foreclosed on the wretched Farepak, while the likes of Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's and Morrisons were the Spirits of Christmas Yet To Come After All by piling in with cash to rescue otherwise spoilt Christmases, to the tune of many hundreds of thousands of pounds.
As a former expert, I could picture the scene in the boardrooms of these retail chains. Do we have a commercial obligation to bale out these savers? Of course not. Moral obligation? No. But what's the PR cost likely to be if we resist the calls of Labour politicians to do so? Considerable. And is there good PR mileage in doing so? Yes. Okay, let's do it.
I hope that's cynical of me. I really hope some the gestures of compensation arose from genuine compassion for those families who suffered considerable financial strain just ahead of Christmas. But the trouble is that such uplifting gestures are obscured by those posturing, hand-wringing, holier-than-thou politicians. The supportive retailers looked like they were being forced into it. And other unworthy suspicions arose in my mind: Could it be that other retailers were concerned that Farepak's failure could take the shine of the great annual retail festival? Heaven forefend that shoppers should be put off their annual homage at the great altar of Mammon.
Actually, I expect most of the other retailers were behaving thoroughly decently. It was the finger-wagging politicos that were getting it wrong. The communications problem that they created was largely the consequence of their thoughtless choice of vocabulary and their wilful misunderstanding of how business is done. MPs said "Christmas had been cancelled" for Farepak's investors. Well, only if you believe that Christmas is exclusively about the retail experience. And only if you believe that individual friends, family and strangers, rather than companies and Government, aren't going to rally round in the spirit of Christmas to ensure that the dispossessed aren't excluded from the celebrations.
Again and again, I heard MPs on the radio say that these savers were "decent, ordinary, hard-working people", the implication being that those who work for big retailers and banks are villainous, pampered layabouts. Perhaps a fraud may be discovered in the system; almost certainly Farepak's management was incompetent. But MPs chose to sneer at HBOS too. What was the bank supposed to do? Continue to back failing companies until it went bust itself? If so, I suspect the same MPs would be on radio saying it was a disgrace that thousands of small HBOS shareholders and pensioners should be treated this way.
At the forefront of the political attacks on big business was Ian McCartney. He called the Farepak collapse "a national emergency". No it wasn't. A national emergency is the terrorist threat to the UK that his Government has generated through its foreign policy. This was a company failure. Mr McCartney is known for his in-depth understanding of British business. A decade ago he dressed up as a pantomime fat-cat and stood outside the AGMs of privatised utilities complaining about the profits they made. It makes one quite giddy to know that he is a minister in the Department for Trade & Industry.
For this breed of politician, there is some arbitrary point at which the profits made by a company, operating within the law, cease to be about prosperity and become about greed. I heard one of his colleagues saying that he was campaigning for Farepak customers and against HBOS "because he was a socialist". Not enough of a socialist, however, to campaign for the banks to be nationalised. Remember, these are people who are quite happy when companies are making lots of money and giving it to the Labour Party in exchange for peerages.
These are just some of the issues that the communications functions in the companies concerned could have got into. But, of course, it's safer just to cough up. It's a pity, but I don't know what should be done about it. As a former PR expert, it's someone else's problem.