Much like supporting a football team, just when you think it’s all going swimmingly and your club’s in for a period of stability – and hopefully success – bang – the rug is pulled from underneath.
Politics has a large element of that, although the people we elect to represent us seem pretty much immunised to the rough and tumble of what can be a pretty cut throat business.
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Last week, British politics saw the largest reshuffle of senior and junior Ministers since the coalition government of Conservatives and Liberals took office four years ago and with it came one casualty for auto.
I say ‘casualty,’ but in fact the now former Business Minister, Michael Fallon, has not been quietly airbrushed out of history, quite the opposite in fact, he has been catapulted to one of the highest offices in the land, that of UK Secretary of State for Defence.
Fallon has won widespread praise for his tenure in ‘Biz,’ taking a forensic interest in the automotive sector among the myriad responsibilities associated with such a wide-ranging brief, in particular the Automotive Council, widely cited abroad as a model way with which to squeeze the maximum out of scarce resources in straitened times.
I and some other media interviewed Fallon a few weeks ago at the Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders (SMMT) ‘Meet the Buyer’ day in London’s Docklands area and he struck me as a sharp cookie, switched on and concise, intelligent and persuasive.
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By GlobalDataHe’s a politician of course and well used to delivering soundbites, but I had the impression he wasn’t just going through the motions, that others’ praise of him wasn’t an exaggeration and that he genuinely had the automotive sector’s interest at heart.
But the King is dead, long live the King and the SMMT is well used to the revolving door of politics that can often see politicians enter and exit the stage with bewildering speed.
In fairness to this government however, this re-jigging of the pack of cards is the first major event of its kind since it assumed power in 2010, although the fact the UK is now only a mere nine months from a general election has the more cynical crying the reshuffle is no more than cosmetic change designed to persuade the electorate of its ‘fresh and modern’ thinking.
The SMMT is putting a stoic face on the departure of Fallon – whose elevation to Defence Secretary is presumably an offer he couldn’t refuse. The automotive body after all has seen a procession of Ministers come and go and it is very used to starting anew.
So just who is Matthew Hancock, who at the age of just 35, will now be able to attend UK Cabinet meetings in the guise of his new, if tortuously long new title of: ‘Minister of State at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, Minister of State at the Department of Energy and Climate Change and Minister of State for Portsmouth.’
He was previously an economist at the Bank of England – so in that respect can at least claim to have had a ‘proper job’ unlike so many career politicians – and in 2005 moved to work for the then Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.
Osborne has championed the automotive sector through the auspices of Hancock’s boss, Business Secretary, Vince Cable and as the reshuffle is thought by some to be positioning the man with the purse strings as a successor to Prime Minister, David Cameron, Hancock could well be in a privileged position to bang the vehicle sector now and in the future.
Hancock’s brief is staggering – clearly automotive is a key part of it but it also encompasses vast swathes of UK manufacturing as well as the enormous challenge of energy generation and renewable sources in the future including smart grids and a network of recharging points.
Of equal importance to the auto sector will be his role in the low carbon economy, low emission vehicles and electronics, all areas ripe for development, although with pure electric uptake still relatively minute in the UK, that will clearly be a tough challenge.
So the SMMT will be hoping – and expecting – more of the same from Hancock as they had from Fallon but the association is breathing a sigh of relief at least the very top job is still under the same tenure.
“Generally, the key thing is stability and Vince Cable [Secretary of State for Business], is still at the helm,” an SMMT spokesman tells me. “We already have a good relationship with Matt Hancock – the SMMT already knows him.
“He is a skilled Minister [and] was at our National Apprenticeship event – we don’t have to go through an education process of getting him up to speed.
“Ministers come and go – we always say we prefer stability but what the Prime Minister does is up to him and we have a good message to tell.”
So more of the same would be welcomed – and crucially – if the Conservatives win the election next May it would be particularly useful if Hancock was either kept in his post or at the very least retained in the Department for Business.
This administration has showed it can allow Ministers continuity and if that is a trend, it’s a very welcome one rather than allowing posts to treated as if a political football.
