Contemptuous of the little guy, vaguely ashamed of anything that looks regional or ‘provincial’, supercilious and essential vacuous but pathetically needy, deeply comfortable with variable application of rules and laws, desperately in awe of corporate power and wealth and desperate to ingratiate itself to that wealth and power for emotional and psychological reasons as much as any statable, credible purpose.
So what am I describing? Peter Mandelson or Scotland’s economic development policy? And what, possibly, could be the connection? Let’s have a wee look shall we.
Let’s start with Scotland’s economic development policy. Go out and talk to anyone in the Scottish business sector in private (unless they’re in the wealth management industry) and ask them about Scottish Enterprise. They will tell you the same thing; it is useless, pointless, utterly disinterested in Scottish business and obsessed with hanging out with big corporate players.
Go and look at the Scottish Government’s economic strategy and explain what it means other than the bit where it says ‘inward investment’. That means ‘flog off every national asset, bend any rule for a foreign corporation, beg them and give them money, over and over again’. Or ‘please let me hang around with someone who might appoint me to their board’.
Is this mono-obsession with begging rich people to spend some money in Scotland and this utter contempt for the dull, boring business of supporting domestic businesses to help them grow is the defining feature of Scottish economic development policy. In fact, it is all there is – the rest is just adjectives and noise.
The outcome of this is a catastrophe which it seems no politician in Scotland is allowed to mention. If you’ve not seen it I urge you to look at this graph. It shows how incredibly bad this corporate reverse charity has been for Scotland. We are so, so bad compared with other countries it’s embarrassing.
Put simply, no other advanced economy which isn’t a tax haven exports its wealth at the rate Scotland does. In the first 20 years of devolution we gave away an entire year’s wealth to overseas owners because we as a nation are owned by foreign corporations and equity funds. We lose more than five per cent of our wealth every year. It is crippling us.
A description of what Mandelson tried to do to developing countries in Africa, but take out the specifics and it sounds almost identical to Scottish economic development policy
Meanwhile we have no regional economic strategy, no real major Scottish international businesses and none growing into major international businesses, no ownership of energy or land or other crucial national assets. This is a country which won’t support domestic businesses (really, go and ask them) but gave Amazon £4 million to build a warehouse.
It doesn’t make any sense – unless Peter Mandelson is writing Scotland’s economic strategy. Because we know that Mandelson basically has contempt for anyone and anything below PLC level. The latest Epstein files show that he has always been working against the interests of the British public and for the foreign corporations he admires so much.
If you need a reminder of how Mandelson really operated in government then I suggest you read this. An extract: "He put pressure on them to let … corporations muscle out local firms and make privatisation legally irreversible, ... sought to force … countries to hand over crucial resources."
That is a summary of Mandelson’s policy when he was head of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. It is a description of what he tried to do to developing countries in Africa, but take out the specifics as I have here and it sounds almost identical to Scottish economic development policy.
But how could this be? What could be Mandelson’s reach into Scottish Government policy? There’s definitely no way that our Director General for the Economy could be Mandelson’s right hand man at his widely scandalised and discredited lobbying firm Global Counsel? You know, the one global corporations are running from in horror at the optics?
And it couldn’t have been the case that our DG got there directly from Mandelson’s company, no cool-off period, no pause, no proper due diligence, no passing go and no collecting two hundred dollars? Except it is true.
The Scottish establishment thinks like Mandelson, behaves like Mandelson and sees success the same way as Mandelson
Gregor Irwin is the civil servant in charge of Scotland’s economy. He was Mandelson’s Chief Economist at Global Counsel for a decade and toured the world with him giving speeches and presentations to corporate clients. He left Global Counsel and was working in the Scottish Government within the month – and no-one cared or paid any attention.
I’ve tried to get people interested in this clear conflict of interests before but it took the Epstein Files to really show how grim this all was. I cannot for the life of me see how this was allowed to happen. It is impossible to not see this as a conflict of interests.
Now I should stress, Gregor Irwin is not responsible for the current state of Scotland’s economy, but only because his shift from The Prince of Darkness’s bean counter to civil servant only happened in 2023. Things were already a mess long before that. But it really does highlight the mentality. Gregor Irwin is the perfect candidate for the job of flogging Scotland off cheap to rich foreigners and undermining domestic small and medium-sized businesses.
He will have no discernible expertise or experience of small or medium-sized businesses and has made a career out of servicing precisely the kind of global corporations Scotland doesn’t have. Why bring a corporate schmoozer to run an economy of small and medium businesses?
I also need to stress that I don’t know Irwin and have no reason to believe he has acted in any inappropriate way. Yes, for me, choosing to work for Mandelson at all raises serious questions about your judgement, but his appointment says much, much more about the administrative and political culture in Scotland than it does about him.
What it tells us is that the Scottish establishment thinks like Mandelson, behaves like Mandelson (in its business dealings) and sees success the same way as Mandelson. And that means effectively abolishing Scotland as an economic entity and turning it into a home where global capital can make significant gains at the expense of the public.
Scotland stinks. This kind of conflict of interest is the governing methodology of the country. There is no revolving door between the private sector and the policymaking function of government – because there is no door, no barrier at all. It has merged. It is disgraceful.
The whole thing needs cleared out. It is a failing system riddled with conflicts of interest, moral hazard and, let’s not kid on here, corruption. That the Worst Man in the World This Week (Mandelson) casts his shadow over the Scottish Government is inevitable when that government enjoys the shadows so much.
It is a disgrace and in any functioning democracy this would be challenged. In Scotland this is just normal. Failure is our way, though of course it only looks like failure from below. From above? It is working perfectly.