So I think you have to be careful not to talk ourselves into a position where we are saying that the UK is all at CD use your words adrift. I think the UK has a huge amount to offer. We have a lot of extraordinary businesses and amazing talent pool. We have to be careful, I think, not to talk ourselves into a dark spot, because that's not the UK that I think I recognize and that I think we will want to build.
Do you think that government believes that it is their job to address the issues of business, because when I speak to business people, you know, these issues are well known. Are they listening?
I think it really depends where you are and what your sector is. You know, I hear wildly different things. People who are in my background are the kind of high growth tech sector. They hear language coming out of government about wanting to build you know, AI friendly environment. We're starting more digital businesses than ever before. We've got more to use the word I hate the most unicorn companies than many countries across the world and certainly in Europe.
So if you're in that sector, I think you might feel that government is really listening and that you have you know, you understand the direction of travel, but that's not true across other bits of the country and other sectors.
So to go back to Doncaster or where I was this week, you know, Doncas has just had its airport closed, it didn't get the hospital that it was hoping for, and these things really impact in the local economy and there was extremely harsh criticism of the leveling up agenda in that area, and I think if you're sitting in certain places then you're completely right. It feels as though maybe there aren't the priorities that you'd hope for, and
the clarity is, you know, far from obvious. So it does really depend and that I think is a problem. You know, the government needs to show that it's listening to not just one area of business but the whole country and really responding to the needs of businesses across multiple different sectors. If we're going to return to the growth that we all think we want and can achieve.
On executive pay, would that make the difference to creating more competitive businesses or businesses that would IPO in London as opposed to the US scale up? Is that a key factor?
I don't know if that's the key factor. I think that talent in its macro form is at fundamental right. You know, I think the thing that perhaps has surprised me the most it's becoming president, is just not the need for more skills in this country, but actually it's just finding people, retaining people, making sure that we have got the talent that we need across the whole piece. And I would use the word there's a kind of
people's crisis in this country. So there's always debates, people saying we don't pay enough, we don't pay well compared to the US. People leave this country because of pay and that possibly the case, but there are other reasons to be in the UK. It's an incredibly clement business environment in many ways. I'm not sure it's the only piece I really I recognize for some businesses it's important.
I think the bigger challenge here is that so many businesses are facing such a tightening of the labor market.
In terms of that industrial strategy, do you think that there is reluctance to dig down and actually come up with a big national economic strategy akin to Germany's or China's or now the US is in Europe When it comes to the green economy.
I don't think we're doing enough from fast enough on a green economy. No. I think that, you know, the targets and the ambitions to reach that zero are one part of this, but I think, you know, talking to businesses, there's so many things we're not doing to help them scale up. You know. I was horrified again to go back to some of the visits that I've made recently about the constructions just around the national grid and for some businesses to be able even to connect to it
to enable some of their green transition. So there's plenty more that we need to unlock, and I feel businesses frustration in not being able to convince government to take some of the steps to make sure that we're really building our strengths and also helping the businesses that need to transition themselves.
We've had quite a chaotic period of government would quite statement. So I mean, I would say also over the whole thirteen year period actually of conservative government, in some ways you could call it quite fragile and pretty chaotic. More recently, is the UK now paying the price for that fragility and that sort of government chaos.
I do think you need to have if not, you know, one level of stability. Economically, you need businesses to feel most importantly that they can look ahead with certainty that there's not going to be this constant rotation and chaos. You know, it's business relies on certainty, and we've got lots of people that want to invest in this country, but they want to see that this country is not going to go through these immense periods of chaos as
you've described. You know, I would argue that we have had periods of stability, of course, you know, the coalition government. Now when we look back on it, I think feels like a period of certainty over the last thirteen years that you know, we haven't enjoyed in the last five
or six. So yes, of course we need to have that, and I really hope that whatever the results the next election, we will look on the global stage as like a country that has sorted out its political and the meanderings, to use some other generous word, and gives confidence both for inward investment and the internal investment that we need.