In praise of Andy Street

Commentators like me often lament the lack of business experience among leading politicians – but also observe how few business leaders ever make successful transitions into the political arena. Archie Norman tried his hand as an opposition front-bencher, didn’t like it, and returned to the boardroom, latterly to lead the revival of Marks & Spencer; Digby Jones moved on from the CBI to serve uncomfortably as a trade minister under Gordon Brown. But there’s one obvious exception to the rule that politics and corporate life require totally different skill sets: Andy Street, who is campaigning for a third term as Tory mayor of the West Midlands, the UK’s second-most populous city-region after London.

We’re so used to seeing Street championing his territory and outplaying Westminster and local opponents that his previous 31-year career with the John Lewis Partnership has been largely forgotten. But his tenure there as managing director from 2007 until his resignation to fight the 2017 mayoral election is remembered as an era of golden and relatively stable growth for the employee-owned retailer, which has been rocky ever since.

Having snatched unexpected victory over Labour by the slimmest of margins in his first poll, Street returned with a handsome majority in 2021 and has built a record of achievement that’s notably businesslike – in attracting inward private-sector investment as well as billions from central government, in achieving affordable housing targets, in local transport projects, and even in trying to negotiate a version of the botched HS2 project that will finally take it northwards from Birmingham to Manchester.

And all this at no extra cost to residents, since there’s no mayoral levy, while Birmingham’s bankrupt Labour-led city council imposes a 21 per cent emergency council-tax hike. Street himself is credited with operating largely above tribal politicking and – according to my saloon-bar source in those parts – ‘many local lefties last time round sneaked down to the polling stations and voted for him’.