Who speaks for pie factories if the CBI goes down?

Three months ago I praised Tony Danker, director general of the Confederation of British Industry, for berating the government over corporate tax rises and skill shortages: at last, I said, a CBI chief con brio. But now he’s been fired following an investigation into his ‘workplace conduct’ and three other CBI staffers have been suspended over other claims, including a rape allegation. The taint is life-threatening: if members flee, the CBI won’t survive. And if it doesn’t, say critics, not much is lost – because as a lobby group for the interests of its dominant large corporate subscribers, the UK’s leading employers’ organisation was already past its sell-by date.

Fair comment? I say nothing of the conduct complaints – other than to observe that what with allegations not long past of bullying at the Institute of Directors and sexual harassment at the Presidents Club (a charity event for corporate big-shots), the boss class may need urgent behavioural retraining. As for representing industry, gone are the days when Downing Street felt it must listen equally to the CBI and the TUC. Having favoured euro membership, opposed Brexit and turned suspiciously woke, the CBI was already diminished in Tory eyes. Boris Johnson’s unhinged Peppa Pig speech to its 2021 conference confirmed that dismissive view.

Now government relations with the CBI have officially been ‘paused’, who’s left to speak for British enterprise? In practice, the media prefers to hear from boardroom celebs – Lord Wolfson of Next, Tim Martin of Wetherspoons, even Bernard Looney of BP – rather than lesser spokesmen, while multinational giants deploy their own armies of lobbyists. At the other end of the scale, the Federation of Small Businesses and myriad trade associations do their best. But if the CBI is crippled, who will take up its neglected role of defending the struggling middle: the metal bashers, component makers and pie factories in the engine room of the domestic economy? All public reputations walk tightropes these days, but this fall is, in every sense, bad for business.