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  • The Industry 2.0: Journalist aspirants rival bankers for drama and drive

    The Industry 2.0: Journalist aspirants rival bankers for drama and drive

    Daphne Phillips

    I recently enjoyed the BBC’s new drama Industry, in which we follow five graduates that vie for a permanent job at the fictional investment bank, Pierpoint. The clashes, the deceit, the egos and the excess draw you into their storm in a teacup. Yet I couldn’t help but notice that none of this rivals the tempest that gathers around graduates trying to break into the world of journalism.  

    Being one of them myself, and on one of the most competitive and well-respected journalism courses in the country, I can say with confidence that they’re a maverick and driven bunch. Since we spent last semester enjoying in-person teaching but with very little social life outside of the course, the long days, intensity of work and shared dream have led to a sense of village community. 

    But as with any village, there is also drama and intrigue. There has been suspected ‘ideas stealing’ and the reckonings to follow. Meanwhile, the psychological warfare of group chats reveals how many grad schemes and jobs people have applied for. 

    Some want to infiltrate, investigate, and expose terrorist organisations, whilst others are fiends at trawling through suspicious MPs’ expense record. Others just want to write about cricket. There is depth and there is range to their pursuit to make a living out of words. 

    Then there is the world of freelancing – like banking, one with its own quirky words and rules. Freelancing can be very rewarding and is an excellent way to introduce yourself to publications you one day hope to work at full-time. It is also another way of quantifiably comparing yourself to your journalist peers. Some will already be working on documentaries; others are writing features for national outlets; and the relentless Twitter stream can all seem a bit much sometimes. 

    Investment banking may be competitive, but it’s got nothing on journalism. More graduates than ever are interested in journalism as a career-path, and unfortunately there are fewer jobs waiting for them. The result is a highly competitive but undoubtedly exciting atmosphere.  

    Photo credit: Austine Distel on Unsplash

  • Sir Rocco Forte: ‘I’ve never worked so hard in my life’

    Sir Rocco Forte: ‘I’ve never worked so hard in my life’

    Robert Golding speaks to the famous hotelier about his opposition to lockdown and what graduates need to know about the hotel industry 

    For many, it will be outdated to think of Covid-19 as being a Biblical reckoning of sorts, where the last shall be first, and the first last, but there have been some tremendous reversals of fortune.  

    Hoteliers are up there with airline owners and restauranteurs among those who have most had to duck and weave. And there’s no hotelier more famous than Sir Rocco Forte. To talk to him is to suspect that he is the sort of man in whom stress takes the form of indignation, but we should be open-minded about that: Forte has seen his business upended by the pandemic.

    Forte is a lockdown sceptic of the Toby Young and Laurence Fox school, but with the crucial difference that with business interests to protect – and employees to look after – he has attracted less opprobrium.  That’s partly because he is talking from a position of commercial pragmatism rather than whimsical philosophical pushback. This is the voice of business and it’s a powerful thing to hear.

    He begins our interview by recalling the strains of the first lockdown: “Our German hotels stayed open with greatly reduced staffing levels, as we had long-term customers and under law we couldn’t take advantage of their furlough scheme, if we closed. In Russia the hotels remained open as there was no furlough, and therefore there wasn’t much difference in cost between staying open and closed.” 

    New opening, Villa Igiea

    He sighs pre-emptively at the thought of the ensuing recollections: “The reality is most of my hotels depend principally on international business. The Italian city centre hotels [such as the Hotel Savoy in Florence, and the Hotel de Russie in Rome] have six per cent local business; Brown’s of London has nine per cent UK business. With restrictions on international level, they can’t function on a profitable basis.” 

    But Forte is in the league of the hugely successful and one can sense beneath the extraordinary difficulty of the situation his resilience. He will not take reversal lightly – and 2020 did see a few successes. “Most of these hotels will continue to limp along. The two exceptions in August, September and October were our 40-bedroom hotel Masseria Torre Maizza in Puglia, and the Verdura Resort in Sicily which had a reasonable August. But it’s a gloomy scenario.” 

    To put it mildly, Forte is no fan of the Johnson administration, but reserves special ire for government scientists. “The government needs to change its attitude to the pandemic,” he continues. “The very few people who are endangered are old and have underlying health problems. It’s not nice to talk about people dying and it’s sad, but it’s not a disease that affects young people. Scientists you’ve never seen before are now enjoying the limelight: they didn’t have authority before, but can now tell people what to do. Really, we should get back as quickly as possible to a position where we’re all allowed to make up our own minds about the risks we want to take.”

    The Verdura Resort in Sicily enjoyed a profitable summer in 2020

    Forte was talking before the second wave, and the deaths which followed. When I catch up with him again in late April however he questions the government’s narrative about the spike in deaths: ‘I am also upset about the exaggeration of deaths. The reality is that under the age of 60,10,000 people have died, they’re running the economy. 80,000 of the so-called Covid deaths have been in people over 80 and another 30,000 of people between 70 and 80. It’s not a reason to close the economy. The whole thing is to terrify people into submission. I never knew how totalitarian states cowed people into submission. Now I know how they did it.”

    Perhaps it will always be salutary to have someone like Forte arguing during a time like this against the status quo since that asks those in power to check whether the balance is right. “We closed our whole economy and it’s just nonsense, we’ve got to move away from being ultra-cautious and ultra-careful.” 

    In the event of it, the Johnson administration did listen to some extent and in hindsight we all know, after the Winter of Variants, that so far, there has always been cost attached to the decision to open up. Yet we also know that we can’t go on like this indefinitely, and Forte is among the most compelling voices pointing to the cost to business of not opening up.

    Forte, like Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, wants his staff back in the office. “I started getting people back in the office in July 2020. Staff were anxious to get back to work. Employers have got to get harder with people. People who have underlying health issues – that’s understandable. It’s the same with the schools: children are not at all at risk of the disease.” 

    Sir Rocco Forte outside Brown’s as part of its Luxury is Local push. Brown’s footfall pre-pandemic was only 9 per cent domestic

    The counter-argument would run that this misses the point and that nobody is particularly arguing that they are: what the government is saying is that they can carry the disease and transmit it to someone who is at risk. Forte pushes back on this: “The government said there would be a spike when the children went back to school in March and there wasn’t.”

    Forte is illuminating on the commercial reality: “The economy is talked about in the abstract. It’s about people’s livelihoods and their families. We’re still not open and free to work.” This is plainly true, but there again one might say that it’s precisely in recognition of this fact that we have the furlough scheme.

    The suspicion remains that confronted with the pressures of SAGE’s advice, and the public health, Forte might have done the same thing as Johnson and Sunak, although perhaps with even greater reluctance. He rejects this: “I keep thinking, ‘What would Mrs. Thatcher have done?’ For one thing, she’d have known the science herself. And she’d’ve have taken a much more pragmatic approach. And why is the government talking about an early election? Because the government is popular and people are at home, being paid and not having to work. We’re not seeing the eventual effect of all this, which will come two years down the road. Their propaganda has made them popular and they don’t want to see adverse effects. There’s a lot of talk internally within the Party about a new election.”

    Forte then is a man at bay, and at odds with the government. If you take the long view, you might say that the brand is strong, and that given his own immense savvy, he will find a way back. But there must be days when it doesn’t feel like that. ‘It’s cost the company around £100 million,’ he tells me in April.

    It’s no surprise to hear his opposition to home-working going forwards. Recalling the first lockdown he says: “For the first six weeks, I’ve never worked harder in my life, but after a while the whole thing pales. Being in an office creates discipline. And if not being in an office is demotivating for me, what’s it doing to the rest of my staff?” 

    And what about the position on tax going forwards? Forte is clear about mooted tax rises: ”We want to get the economy moving, and we’re not going to do that by raising taxes. Servicing the debt will cost half a billion a year which is not significant. Why do we need to start repaying the debt now? We finished off paying our war debt three years ago. We don’t need to rush.”  

    The Balmoral in Edinburgh is another option for the domestic traveller

    As a Conservative Party donor, has he spoken to the prime minister about all this? “I’m afraid I’m not in a position to pick up the phone to him to tell him what I think. The best way to influence those in government is to make your views known very publicly. I have appeared on television which is not something I normally do – desperation.” 

    So will he be looking to hire this year? “Once things normalise, a lot of businesses won’t be around anymore. Ones like mine who can borrow more money will be more indebted with the constraints that puts on business. But we’ll still be looking to hire people.” 

    So what does he look for in potential employees? “We look for an element of enthusiasm for the industry. I would never advise anyone to come into this industry who didn’t enjoy working in it: you should try and do a holiday job for a few months, and see if you like the feel of working in a hotel and what it entails.” What should they be prepared for? “It’s quite hard work,’ he says. “It involves unsociable hours a lot of the time and people in the business enjoy that. You need to have camaraderie and a sense of belonging. Upwards mobility can be very quick. You can start as a waiter and end up in a management position if you have the right attitude and the abilities to do so and these are recognised. If you’re a shrinking violet it’s not the place for you.” 

    So, once the pandemic’s over with, what are his plans? “Well, I have big concentration in Italy as we already have a strong position. But I’m not in Milan. Venice is somewhere we should be. I want to do more in the UK. It’s very difficult outside of London to look at smaller hotels in important tourist destinations where a larger hotel won’t work. Where a fifty or sixty bedroom hotel would be quite successful. As a UK-based company it’s a shame we’re not doing more here.” 

    You get the impression that this is how he’s used to thinking – dynamically and rapidly about future plans. It’s a window into the mindset the pandemic has deprived him of. “Then I’m not in Paris, not in Madrid and Barcelona. I’m in St. Petersburg not Moscow. Then I’d like to be in the States – a big proportion of our business comes from there, so New York and Miami…” 

    At which his voice trails off, seemingly with the realisation that none of this is possible at the moment. But everything about the man makes you realise it will be again – and perhaps sooner than any of us realises.  

  • Michel Roux Jr: ‘Le Gavroche is more than the food’

    Michel Roux Jr: ‘Le Gavroche is more than the food’

     

    As part of our regular series examining the impact of family relationships on careers, we spoke to the La Gavroche chef about keeping the family flame.

    If ever you’re lucky enough to eat at Le Gavroche, your good fortune is likely to be compounded once you’ve had the excellent food. It’s Michel Roux Jr.’s habit to do the rounds after lunch, and perform a friendly tour of the room. Roux will pose for photographs and laugh genially as the complements accrue. ‘I love being able to provide a total experience for our guests,’ he tells us. ‘I love meeting out guests, whether regulars or new.’

    As a result of this tactileIf ever you’re lucky enough to eat at Le Gavroche, your good fortune is likely to be compounded once you’ve had your food. approach to the business, you’d think lockdown might have been difficult. Roux strikes a cheerful note. ‘I’ve been incredibly busy during lockdown, not least with the arrival of our first grandchild, which is really wonderful.’

    So another Roux enters the world, no doubt stocked with the genes of a master chef. Roux has followed in the footsteps of not just one but two famous relatives. You might think that his father might have been Michel Roux Sr., who died in March of this year, but you’d be wrong: in fact, his father is Albert Roux, and Michel Jr. was named after his uncle. Le Gavroche – which opened in 1967 – was the first UK restaurant to obtain three Michelin stars, and Michel took it over in 1993. How did it feel to be following in the footsteps of famous relatives? Roux recalls: ‘Of course, it was a massive responsibility when I took over the reins at Le Gavroche, nearly 30 years ago now. But if my father hadn’t thought I was ready, he wouldn’t have handed them to me. There is no question I feel a commitment to maintaining the Roux flame, whether in the restaurants or through our Roux Scholarship competition.’

    One often feels for the children of famous parents: it must be hard to achieve anything in your own right. Martin Amis frequently complains about the Kingsley comparisons, and Euan Blair cannot discuss his own original (and unBlairite) views on education without having ‘education, education, education’ returned to him.

    So did it take a while for Michel Jr. to arrive at his own identity as a chef? Roux explains that he’s moved with the times: ‘Over the years, the food at Le Gavroche has evolved to embrace the requirements of modern diners, so a meal at Le Gavroche will be a lighter one than when the restaurant first opened, but the essence of French classicism is very much there.’

    It’s a good point: we might sometimes strive to differentiate ourselves from our parents’ achievements in the workplace, but usually time will do that for us anyway, and ensure that we inhabit a different moment in history. One example where that’s proven the case with Michel Jr. is in his highly visible TV career.

    So how does he think shooting will be in the post-lockdown era? ‘I was lucky to be involved in the production of ‘Hitched at Home, Our wedding in Lockdown’ for Channel 4, which was definitely TV for lockdown. It was very different to the usual filming set-up.’ How so? ‘It’s going to be incredibly difficult to make the same sorts of shows as before, even with one meter social distancing.’ But Roux adds that he’s ‘seen a lot of creativity: talking heads, and getting family members to film over longer periods using professional equipment at home.’

    Interestingly, the Roux tradition is already being continued in the next generation. Emily Roux and her husband Diego Ferrari have their own restaurant Caractère in Notting Hill. So what would Roux say to young people mulling a hospitality career? ‘Front of house and in the kitchen, hospitality can offer an amazing career. You’re always learning, you have the opportunity to experiment and be creative, and it’s incredibly satisfying to provide good service. But it is hard work, and you need to put in the time to learn the craft.’

    And how has lockdown been for Le Gavroche? ‘The most important thing for me is to make sure our staff are doing as well as they can. It was frustrating waiting for the government to come up with their guidelines for the hospitality industry.’

     Roux chose not to home deliver (‘Le Gavroche is more than the food’) and instead kept in touch with regulars through newsletters ‘to keep everyone engaged.’

    Despite his obvious love of his work, the question persists. One can’t help but wonder whether the family name hampers people like Roux, and whether some other career might have been possible had there not been the need to keep it in the family.

    But Roux doesn’t feel this way. ‘I never considered anything else. Food is in my DNA, and I love working in the industry.’ Parfait and bon appetite.

     

  • Douglas Pryde on how mentoring helped him find success in the pensions industry

    Douglas Pryde on how mentoring helped him find success in the pensions industry

    The pensions industry is very similar to the thoroughbred horse breeding industry in that both businesses are long term industries which tie up a lot of long-term capital.

    With the thoroughbred horse you breed the best with the best, and hope for the best.

    When I started my business life as a trainee inspector (salesman) with Scottish Equitable in 1974, I was hoping for the best. The Edinburgh-based insurer had an excellent pensions pedigree and a long-term goal to breed their own sales force to acquire business levels to support their ambitions to be a major player in the pensions industry.

    The Scottish Equitable had developed a structure, a training manual and programme with a training manager in situ to recruit and develop staff replacements for staff who left from a pool of trainees.

    Aiden O’Brien operates a similar programme so that when a Galileo son retires to stud, he is replaced by another son of Galileo.

    Aiden’s strategy works because looking at past performance Aiden has won eight Derbys and countless numbers of group one races including the Prix de L’arc de Triomphe.

    I was recruited with others and sent into training with John M McKay, the Glasgow manager who was an Edinburgh man and like Prince Philip, a Royal Navy man.

    McKay treated all his sales staff as officers and for four years guided me through my apprenticeship.

    McKay sent me on sorties to friendly insurance brokers to deliver quotations and collect new business for me to see what was involved.

    Please remember that senior officials wore bowler hats in these days to appointments and there was no such thing as a dress down Friday. McKay insisted that our appearance was appropriate for the job consisting of a pressed dark suit, shirt and dark tie and black polished shoes.

    McKay would tell us all at branch sales meetings to get our hair cut once a week and polish our shoes every day. Shoe polish with a brush and duster was available in the gents’ toilets.

    The discipline and organisation of being in the right hotel worked for me just as it does for racehorses. A coordinated training programme works for the young trainee inspector, so this inspector has much to thank his mentor John M McKay for.

    Four years in Glasgow under McKay tutelage was essential and rewarding for me and Glasgow was a nursery for the big branches in the South of England and London.

    McKay would organise training days on a regular basis and extra days if needed. McKay’s training days were conducted jointly where he would accompany me to see banks, building societies, CAs, lawyers and insurance brokers.

    After each call a kerb side sales debriefing would follow, a bit like when a horse trainer speaks to a jockey after a race to establish what can be learned from a race.

    My senior colleagues in Glasgow branch thought it was fun because I kept Mr McKay out of the office all day and out of their way. 

    After leaving Glasgow branch, I was promoted to Liverpool and returned to Edinburgh before joining Scottish Widows as assistant marketing manager for pensions. I left Scottish Widows to set up as an IFA in 1987 just before October ’87 financial collapse when equities fell by around 33%. My timing might have been better.

    My IFA business grew using organisational skills and by relying on people and not computers, just as McKay had taught me, to expand the business.

    When the business was sold in 2018, funds under management were about £200 million, not bad from a standing start. It is said that this could not be achieved today because of the obstacles to business with Government obstacles imposed on the financial service business.

    I do not dress down Fridays when on business because to be part, you must look the part.

    Mentors work in all types of business. I was lucky and as my golf partners would say, it is better to be lucky than good and you need to bounce over bankers and not into the sand, and a good pedigree helps.

    Douglas Pryde is a Finito mentor

  • Liz Brewer’s guide to etiquette in a changing world

    Etiquette expert and Ladette to Lady star Liz Brewer talks job interviews, presentation, and how technology is changing the way we communicate.

     

    It’s all about presentation. You have to realise that when you walk in that room, in front of the interviewer or panel of people, they’re going to make an instant decision. They don’t know they’re doing it, but it happens automatically, and it’s all to do with your energy. And so when you walk into a room, you have to take a deep breath and turn your energy from whatever it is, whether you’re frightened, or worried, or having a bad hair day, into positive energy. If you ever been to the east, and you’ve studied Kirlian photography, you know that they can photograph your aura. You have to make that aura – that energy – positive. So you take a deep breath, think positive thoughts, and you go in and your energy will hit them, and they’ll sit up and they’ll say, ‘right, what have we here?’

    Kirlian photograph showing Liz Brewer’s aura

    The thing about communicating over Zoom is that you never manage to judge energy. The whole idea of meeting with people is eye contact, it’s energy contact, and it’s feeling. We are animals, and although a lot of people don’t understand that, we train ourselves to be able to judge people – to know whether this is someone that I can trust and rely on. A lot of people now judge people’s mannerisms and the way they behave to determine things like whether they’re telling the truth or not. It’s happening more and more, and people who have the ability to do that have either spent time realising that have that ability, or they’ve actually studied people. When I started the first discotheque club in Portugal, for over ten years I had a rule for myself that I never danced. I would watch people and I would watch their behaviour, and I must have automatically picked up the ability to be able to read people. And it’s something that you can train yourself to do. A lot of people are unaware of other people, they’re too busy thinking about themselves or looking at everything around them. But just studying people, how they speak, and how they make eye contact is something that we’re going to have to learn to do better and better as this world becomes even more competitive.

    What’s happened in today’s world is, because of technology, everything is speeded up. We can do ten times more nowadays than we could, say, 15-20 years ago. Because of that, we’ve speeded ourselves up, and we overlook things like saying ‘please’, and ‘thank you’, and ‘hello’, and remembering that the person on the till who’s taking our money is a human being. When you’re with another person, that is now precious time, and if you then have your phone out, it’s an interruption. Time is a luxury, and it’s often very special and limited.

    Wherever you work, you have to have your own self-esteem. So when people have said, ‘Oh, well I can’t be bothered to dress up, I’m in the back room packing boxes’, I tell them that how you feel about yourself is a reflection of the way you present yourself. If you catch sight of yourself in a window or mirror, and you’re looking dishevelled with your shoulders hunched down, it doesn’t do much for your self-esteem, in which case, it doesn’t do much for you yourself.

    Life is for living. You never know what’s going to happen from one second to the next, so the way you dress, how you walk, and how you present yourself makes people immediately think, ‘right, this person has respect for us, and they have respect for themselves’. You have to take pride in what you’re doing. If you don’t bother to make yourself look good in the morning, that’s how you’re going to continue during the day. When they’re training people to be soldiers, it’s very important that your shoes shine, it’s very important how your belt is buckled, and how your suit is presented. It’s a question of not just discipline, but it’s a question of actually giving the best of yourself. That’s what it’s all about.

  • Chloe Ward: the publishing sector is now the preserve of a ‘privileged few’

    Chloe Ward: the publishing sector is now the preserve of a ‘privileged few’

    Chloe Ward

    The publishing industry is crucial to society. It gives us new perspectives, encouraging much-needed understanding of the world around us. The content being published has the power to change perspectives and narratives in real life. However, what the industry publishes is a reflection on who is purchasing that content. 

    Currently, the core audience for publishers in the UK is white and middle-class. The whole industry is essentially set up to cater to this one particular audience.

    Being mixed-raced means subjects or content in contemporary publishing that relate to my own lived experience feel few and far between.   

    I have always loved books and stories, finding it easy to be whisked away by dragons or follow heroes into battle. However, it has always felt to me like someone else’s adventure, someone else’s journey. To this day the content I consume, though wonderful, has very little to do with me or the cultures I am familiar with.

    When I started studying publishing at university, it was originally because I wanted to be the one to discover stories like those I’d loved before first-hand. However, throughout my studies, it became clear that this lack of diversity in both industry staffing and output was an issue – and not just my issue, but an issue for publishing as a whole. How much of an audience is this current industry reaching? I knew I wanted to make a change for others like me. 

    When I handed in my dissertation and final major project back in May 2020, despite the global pandemic raging on, I entered the real world with a sense of naivete about how easy finding a job would be.

    At any given time, it is difficult to get a toe in the door of the publishing industry due to its competitiveness. One role at a Big Five publisher can have over 1,000 applicants. But what made it worse was that during the uncertainty of the pandemic no one was hiring.

    I became frantic, spending hours writing and re-writing my CV. Cover letter after cover letter. Adhering to the advice of tutors to just keep on trying… and trying. Tailoring everything for each new role. Endless optimism…only to find hundreds of job rejections in my email.

    It is evident that publishing companies have put some useful initiatives in place for potential graduates, however if the industry wants to transform and diversify, it needs to make far greater and more fundamental changes. Putting more support in place for potential graduate employees is a must. Having a BAME internship available is all well and good, but when only 13%[1]of the workforce identifies as minority ethnic, this leaves a lot to be desired. The goal should be recruiting in a balanced way from all backgrounds, reflecting the demographics of real-life, to prevent gatekeeping of our published output becoming the preserve of a privileged few.

    More needs to be done by the industry once the pandemic is over to ensure that minority groups have a chance to gain employment and in turn make the change needed for a more diverse workforce. It is our job as the young voice driving the next generation to find these solutions and drive for them to be implemented; I have so many ideas and such a thirst to get going – what a difference we can make for our future. I’m excited to see the view from the other side.

    The writer is a graduate, seeking her first job in publishing

    [1]https://www.publishers.org.uk/publications/diversity-survey-of-the-publishing-workforce-2019/#:~:text=13.0%25%20of%20respondents%20identified%20as,yet%20reached%20the%2015%25%20target.

  • Exclusive Finito World CEO Survey

    Exclusive Finito World CEO Survey

    A look back on Sophia Petrides’ exploration of the problems CEOs faced during the pandemic. Originally published June of 2021.

    By Sophia Petrides

    Over the last three months I have beenspeaking with CEOs, leaders and entrepreneurs about leading through the pandemic and lockdowns of 2020 and 21. It will probably come as no surprise that the results show that the 50 leaders I spoke to all reported new challenges as they explored new ways of working remotely. They had to learn, as if from scratch, how to manage teams, and engage with clients and how to manage the group of CFOs, CTOs and CFOs sometimes know as the C-suite. The leaders I spoke to head up small, mid and large cap organisations across financial services, technology, healthcare, sports, consumer brands and manufacturing. I am grateful that they gave their time during a period when – as you will see – that is a commodity more valuable than ever. 

    Encouragingly, all of them shared an overwhelmingly positive outlook for their organisations and each expects to see a strong global economic recovery once our vaccination programmes are fully in place. At the same time most of these business leaders acknowledged that we are unlikely to return to pre-Covid-19 workplace norms anytime soon, if ever. All these CEOs took part on the understanding that my findings would be reproduced anonymously. 

    When it comes to the specifics of how they approached the lockdowns, it is clear that the direction of travel over the last decade towards a more people-centric employee experience, better communication across organisational hierarchies and more inclusive company culture has been greatly accelerated by the pandemic and the needs of working remotely. As one CEO put it, “The pandemic has a silver lining. It’s an opportunity to do things differently, with the time pressure needed to overcome complacency with the current way of doing things.”

    Digital headaches

    We asked the question: “What are your frustrations and challenges that prevent you from being a better leader?” and it yielded some interesting answers which show the most important friction points during the pandemic. These will likely also affect us all going forwards too.  The results can be seen in Fig.1 below.

    The fact remains that digital leadership is difficult. A large part of the leadership challenge has always been aligning the company and its stakeholders around a clear vision. However, in the age of virtual meetings such as Google Meet, Zoom, and other online meeting platforms it has become a more significant challenge. In many respects, engaging with teams digitally underpins most of the major frustrations of the CEOs I spoke to – the problem is the loss of those unplanned moments of interaction that are so important to create a sense of momentum and social cohesion behind the leadership team. There’s no office buzz online, and that informal energy is essential to align teams behind the leadership vision.

    Another major headache – around 19% of issues – was retaining new talent in an age when many of the new hires hadn’t been able to meet their management and colleagues in person, or participate in any of the usual social, informal onboarding experiences that are a normal expectation of everyday working life. However virtual meetings were noted as providing positive experiences too, in that they also give a safe space where younger professionals can voice their views with confidence.

    As one CEO put it, “I miss walking around the floor and connecting with people at all levels. You can’t connect on a human level through virtual meetings, there’s no spontaneity, no chit chat, no watercooler moments. People struggle with burn out, home schooling and not being physically together, you need to find a platform to support innovation because it is lost when people are 100% working from home.”

    Also in relation to Figure 1, I found that around 11 per cent of leaders felt that reaction to the pandemic had caused a shift to short-term strategies and away from the big picture plans in place before. There was a sudden need to have a Covid-19 response, and this in turn triggered a slew of new HR policies. 22 per cent blamed the sudden disruption for the loss of normal KPI reporting and measurements, along with the loss of travel and sales activities, for reducing revenues and growth. One leader told me: “You are challenged by balancing staff well-being and HR policies with Return on Investment (ROI) and frustrated because you can’t spend time with clients like you used to.” 

    NO BOARDROOM BLUES

    Secondly, I asked CEOs what support mechanisms they had found themselves seeking out during Covid-19. These results are displayed in Figure 2. One interesting – and unexpected – result of the survey was the overwhelmingly positive response to online board meetings. Over 68 per cent of my survey group immediately said their boards, trustees and non-executive directors were providing an extremely high level of support. This was attributable to the pandemic, as another unexpected silver lining, not just in providing support to CEOs, but offering mentorship and support to the organisation at a higher level than ever before. One leader was particularly enthusiastic about the reaction of their board: “Pre-Covid-19, it was challenging to get the board of trustees visible and engaged with the team. Now there’s 100 per cent visibility and presence through online meetings, which means the board has moved closer to employees.”

    For those without a traditional board structure to fall back on, there was a fairly even split between two other kinds of support network. Firstly, many leaders sought out colleagues at a similar level who they could talk to about the challenges they were facing off the record. Secondly the role of friends – and in particular, family – in their lives became of increasing importance. In many cases, the opportunity to work from home came hand-in-hand with the chance to make a meaningful change to their work-life balance. Spending more time with the family has proven to be a positive way to recoup lost energy and online meeting fatigue. 

    The Human Side

    Thirdly I asked what the CEOs in question had done to humanise their workplace. There was a follow-up in the question whereby I also asked what the surveyed individuals had done to improve the employee experience. These results are collected in Figures 3 and 4. 

    The results were clear. Covid-19 has accelerated the importance of the employee experience. When I asked how to humanise the workplace there was a split between those who felt the emphasis should be on designing a better employee experience (62 per cent) and those who felt that what was required was more effective two-way communication across the traditional company hierarchy (38%). 

    When I delved into what an elevation of the employee experience might look like to these business leaders, many interesting initiatives were listed. These ranged from holding nutrition and exercise sessions for employees by providing free access to online personal trainers through to ensuring each employee took a scheduled 45-minute mindfulness break daily. A number of workplaces also prioritised in-office working options for people who were feeling lonely or isolated working from home. One CEO confided: “We delivered fresh food hampers, gym kit, games for kids and Amazon vouchers.  It was about paying attention to mental and physical needs and connecting with everyone no matter what level.”

    Leaders also emphasised the importance of creating a culture of fun within their teams. Many added that this required more organisation in the virtual meeting world, and included everything from introducing fun icebreakers in meetings to organised weekly virtual events. However, the most significant aspect of all the employee experience initiatives was limiting working hours, not sending emails over the weekend and ensuring staff took breaks throughout the day. Another CEO explained: “Burnout is an issue. There’s a temptation to work longer hours, but it’s not all about hours – it’s about your output, and that suffers if you don’t get the balance right.”

    In addition, many leaders discussed the importance of making themselves accessible to all levels of staff, including scheduling one-to-one sessions weekly with new recruits to ensure they are settling in. This was especially on the mind of one CEO: “I am very conscious to have regular calls with the team. We have to bring all levels of people closer together and be more approachable and available 24/7.”

    The Question of Morale

    There are, of course, many different tools available to leaders for improving employee experience. The primary one was focusing on company culture (37 per cent) and trying to build better bonds between team members through the kinds of employee experiences we see outlined above. It is important to note that there are two other broad categories of tool for improving employee experience. 

    One is Continuing Professional Development (CPD). This is an essential aspect of making sure employees are staying true to their ambitions. This need for training and continuing development for teams represented 23 per cent of answers. As another put it: “Training and development are vital for sustaining a cohesive team and understand how they fit within an organisation.”  There is a clear role for training to make employees feel respected and empowered, and many CEOs related this need to team performance. Another said: “Empowered means people who make better decisions more cohesively, without the need for constant supervision.”

    In addition, 20 per cent of respondents talked about giving people the space to make their own digital processes, chats, support channels and online activities to boost team morale. 13 per cent suggested that the best employee experience was being on a winning team, and being rewarded as part of a growing business. However, there was a general sense that while digital was essential, automation had a negative effect on team experience because it isolated people during previously social activities like training. Another CEO confided: “We invest billions in making computers more human and making humans more automated. Then we spend billions more trying to humanise humans. Person-to-person contact is impossible to replicate.”

    Hinges Off

    It is fascinating to look back at the lockdown year and consider how much we have learned about working digitally. It brings new challenges in terms of burnout and a lack of team dynamism. The workplace spark, the spontaneity, the atmosphere of a team environment has not digitised effectively. However, there are clear benefits – and arguably greater long-term gains to come – not least in the way digital working has refocused leaders on authentic communications, a flatter hierarchy and better employee experiences. 

    It seems fitting to end on a quote from one CEO, who succinctly explained the need for better comms and experiences, as well as the advantages of working together in the same place. These remarks suggesting a new home-work hybrid might offer a renaissance for the modern workplace: “On my first day, I literally took the door to my office off its hinges. I needed to make a statement that everyone is welcome. Everyone deserves time and empathy. It is vital to feel the pulse of the employees, because that’s the pulse of the business.” It is a pleasant thought that, cooped up in our houses as we’ve been, that we might soon inhabit a working world which has become richer as a result of the pandemic. 

    Photo credit: Christina @ wocintechchat.com 

  • Kamala Harris exclusive: The Woman Who Would be King

    Patrick Crowder and Christopher Jackson look at the woman a heartbeat away from the presidency of the most powerful nation on earth – and asks what lies ahead

    If Kamala Harris’ people are worried about the perception that she has been sidelined in Joe Biden’s White House, then they’ve chosen a curious room in which to conduct an interview.

    It’s a shadowy out-of-the-way chamber which looks like it’s seldom used. Kamala Harris sits on a chair in a maroon pantsuit; beyond her, are two ship models in glass cases which are difficult to make out in the shadows. On the other side of the room, also behind her, is the obligatory but casual display of patriotism: an American flag peeping out of the dark.

    “Everyone has to get vaccinated. The vaccines are free,” she says. “They are safe and they’ll save your life. Get the booster shot. Against Omicron it almost guarantees that you are unlikely to have to go to the hospital much less – God forbid – that you die because of this virus.”

    It’s a sombre setting – appropriate perhaps for what is increasingly proving to be an unhappy historical moment. That’s the case both in respect of the current state of America with its high proportion of unvaccinated peoples and looming inflation, and in relation to Harris’ own approval ratings. At time of writing, according to an average on RealClearPolitics, these stand at 39 per cent, though they have been quite a bit lower than that.

    When Margaret Brennan, the CBS interviewer, asks her about the economy, Harris does a typical politician’s trick and reels off statistics which show the Biden administration to good advantage: “First of all, as an administration, as we look at the end of the year, there are specific facts that we are proud of on the issue of the economy.” And what are those? “We have reduced unemployment down to 4.2 per cent. The economists predicted that we wouldn’t get there for another couple of years, but here we are.” And the deficit? “We have reduced that by over $300 billion. We have created over six million jobs, so there are good things that happened – have happened – as it relates to the strength of the economy.”

    The interview continues. Is Senator Joe Manchin, who torpedoed the administration’s $3 trillion Build Back Better Plan, playing fair with Biden and Harris? “This is too big to be about any specific individual.”

    It’s a tense encounter; in everyone’s minds – and especially, you suspect, in Harris’ – is the fact that Harris has been criticised for her media performances, especially on account of her nervous laughter when she gets a difficult question. According to Freddy Gray, writing in The Spectator, “Harris’s laugh, which she deploys a lot, is widely recognised as the most irritating noise in America.”

    2CB8TXK Washinton, United States. 11th Aug, 2020. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden announced today that he has chosen Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., as his running mate for the 2020 presidential election, both seen in this file photo during a Democratic presidential primary debate, Tuesday, August 11, 2020. Biden and Harris will face off against President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. File Photo by Richard Ellis/UPI Credit: UPI/Alamy Live News
    To Harris’ supporters there is a note of misogyny here which is both regrettable and to be expected for a political “trailblazer” who is serving not just as the first female Vice-President, but as the first Asian-American to reach that office. But to her critics, Harris does embody much that is irritating about the left: a self-righteousness allied to a thin understanding of basic economics, and even a certain ‘wokeness’.

    Which is she then? In reality, everything about the interview makes you long for more depth. We want to go back in time to learn more about her, since everything about Harris – telegenic, prepped, responsive to the zeitgeist – is suggestive of meme, a person entirely tethered to the present.

    But also we long to know what really motivates her – who she is, and above all what the administration she serves really signifies for the virus, the economy, for civil rights, and for the US-UK ‘special relationship’. Above all we want to know if we’re looking at the 47th President of the United States. For this cover story, Finito World spoke to everyone from leading opinion formers in the UK, to political insiders, and working Californians, to discover just that.

    Howard’s Way

    Born in Oakland in 1964, Harris was the daughter of Shyamala Gopalan, a biomedical scientist and Donald Harris, an economics professor. Having experienced segregation during her childhood, it was a formative moment to attend Howard University, from which she would graduate in 1986 with a degree in political science and economics. Reading her memoir The Truths We Hold, you sense it gave her confidence.

    Howard University is a historically Black college in Washington D.C. which was founded in 1867 following the American Civil War. Pertinently for Harris, who would seek an initial career in the law, its former alumni include Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, in addition to Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison, civil rights activist Vernon Jordan, and the late actor Chadwick Boseman.

    It would prove a formative experience for the future Vice-President. Harris writes of feeling that she was in heaven when she first walked in there: “Every signal told students that we could be anything – that we were young, gifted, and black, and we shouldn’t let anything get in the way of our success.”

    Mentoring also came into her life at this point, when she took on a role working as a tour guide at the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Harris recalls: “Once I emerged from my shift to find Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis [both famous actors] in the main area, waiting for a VIP tour after hours. They projected an aura like the luminaries they were, yet they made a special point of engaging me in conversation and telling me that it made them proud to see me as a young woman working in public service.”

    This is the Harris tone, as agreeable as it is anodyne. We can see immediately that it doesn’t seem particularly likely to bridge the divide in America which has grown over the last decade or so: her language lacks the complexity of Obama’s, the persuasiveness of Bill Clinton’s, the folksiness of George W. Bush and Joe Biden, and the sheer oddity and punch of Donald Trump’s.

    If you talk to Californians today you’ll find that Harris’ innate assumptions – that Harris’ journey is de facto good and virtuous – are echoed, showing that she at least has some support there. Talk to people in her home state, and sometimes one finds a patriotism on display difficult to distinguish from a certain piety. Kevin Buckby, a partner of Carbon Partners, tells us: “She’s our local lass from Oakland and I live about five miles from there, so I’m happy to see her success. You need a Kamala equivalent over there as an antidote to Boris.” In such remarks, one finds the validity of the Democratic project unquestioned. To her critics, these plaudits will feel all-too-easy and insufficiently earned.

    2F3FXTW 1986 ca , Washington D.C. , USA : The american politician and attorney KAMALA HARRIS ( born 20 october 1964 ) when was a child aged 22 at Howard University in Washington . From 20 january 2021 the Vice President of the United States of Democrate President of United States Joe BIDEN . She is the United States’ first female vice president, the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history, and the first African American and first Asian American vice president . Unknown photographer . – Vice Presidente alla presidenza Presidente STATI UNITI AMERICA – POLITICO – DONNA POLITICA – POLITIC – per
    Amee Parekh has recently been promoted to head of HR for Uber Freight and Finance from her previous role as head of HR for UberEats US. She, too, is not in doubt of the need for Harris, or someone Harris-like at the top of American politics: “Kamala Harris is absolutely leading the change in the political arena, because we haven’t had a female Vice-President or President ever, and she’s the first woman to make it into office.” So she sees Kamala Harris as a role model? Parekh is effusive: “Kamala Harris is a good role model. I think that change absolutely needed to happen. It needed to happen 20 years sooner, but here we are, and we’ll work with that.”

    This might be called the Kamala-Harris-as-role-model narrative. There is something to it. When Barack Obama ran for the presidency in 2008, he noted how much harder the process was for rival Hillary Clinton: “She was doing everything I was doing, but just like Ginger Rogers, it was backwards in heels.”

    The same is true for Harris. What she has achieved has been done to some extent against the grain. Harris, in this telling, is a pioneer. Her admirers would add that she’s a welcome voice calling for social justice, greater help from the federal government, fewer wars in the Middle East of an essentially unwinnable nature, a kindly border policy, and improvement in voting rights for African Americans.

    For such people, Harris comes readymade as both politician and symbol. Dana Williams, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School at Howard and professor of English says: “It wasn’t just a situation where it’s good to have a Kamala Harris elected; it’s a situation where we absolutely needed a Kamala Harris to be elected.”

    Despite this, even her champions would probably stop short of seriously comparing her to Barack Obama, whose talents under any fair reading seem to outstrip hers. Even so, the argument runs that she is in that mould.

    The trouble is it can seem a fairly short step from there to saying, or implying, that her faults must be overlooked. Her low approval ratings as Vice-President under such a view are either unfair, and a result of sexism or racism, or they might be put down to the inherently tricky nature of the vice-presidency, an office once described by John Nance Garner, FDR’s Vice-President from 1933-1941 as “not worth a bucket of warm piss.”

    For Harris’ critics, it’s not racist to criticise her, it’s racist not to. Besides, her detractors would argue that she raises the question of racism all too readily as a rebuttal to criticism that isn’t racist at all, but entirely justified in a free country.

    A representative statement might be that of former Harris staffer Sean Clegg, as reported by The Washington Post: “I’ve never had an experience in my long history with Kamala, where I felt like she was unfair. Has she called bulls—? Yes. And does that make people uncomfortable sometimes? Yes. But if she were a man with her management style, she would have a TV show called The Apprentice.” Clegg seems to imply that Harris is taking necessary blows for all those African American women who will follow her path.

    2FP00XB United States Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Unity Summit from White House in Washington, DC on Wednesday, May 19, 2021.Credit: Jemal Countess/Pool via CNP /MediaPunch
    But nobody seriously doubts that Harris is in a difficult and sometimes frustrating job. The LBC radio presenter Iain Dale has just finished editing a marvellous collection of essays The Presidents about each occupant of the White House from Washington to Biden, and has been deeply immersed in the American political system.

    “The office of VP is quite a difficult one,” he tells me. “As most people who have been Vice-President will tell you, it has no power but it has influence, but that influence is entirely at the discretion of the president.”

    Which brings us onto the question of Harris’ relationship with President Joe Biden. Dale notes that Harris and Biden seem rather distant. He deems that a puzzling trend.

    “Some presidents really bring their Veeps in,” Dale explains. “Others seem to ignore them – which is weird when you think of it, because the job of president is all-consuming, and you get to choose your Veep – they’re not elected. You’d think if you get someone you trust you’d want them to take over some of the functions of the presidency. That happens rarely. From Eisenhower onwards, can you find a president who really trusted their Veep?”

    In the Brennan interview there’s an awkward attempt to dispel the feeling that Biden and Harris don’t get on: “In fact, the president and I joke and when I leave one of our meetings to go break a tie, he says, ‘Well, that’s going to be a winning vote.’ Whenever I vote, we win. It’s a – it’s a joke we have, but – the stakes are so high.”

    Quality Street

    For others, she’s just not up to the job. This view is best encapsulated by Dr. Randall Heather, who has been involved in British, American and Canadian politics for over 40 years. He pulls no punches whatsoever.

    First up, he wants to put Harris’ Vice-Presidency into context for a UK audience: “If you weren’t in America in 2016 during that presidential campaign, you missed two things,” he explains. “One was a matter of intensity rather than knowledge: it was how deeply upset working class white Americans were about everything. And you can’t understand the pull of Trump, unless you understand that intensity. On the other side, it’s hard to gauge how intensely disliked Hillary Clinton was.”

    The implication is that Clinton may have deserved some of this opprobrium – and that Harris does too. This, Heather explains, is something the UK just doesn’t understand. “Brits love Democratic presidents because they don’t have to live with the outcome of the decisions which are made on a lot of domestic issues.”

    But this is only the beginning. Heather continues: “There are two numbers about Kamala Harris. One is one per cent. The other is 28 per cent. The 28 per cent is her current approval rating [Harris’ approval rating has recovered a bit since we spoke with Heather]. One per cent was the support she got running when she launched her 2020 campaign when she was considered one of the top two or three potential people. She ran an awful campaign. Her team was from California, and the thing to know about California is that it’s really a different planet. It was a shambolic campaign and she crashed before she even made the primary.”

    When I ask if Harris has any positive attributes, Heather is frank: “She has none.”

    This has the virtue of clarity, but something in me wants to push against it. It seems inconceivable, even in today’s fractured America, that someone could rise so high without talent or any personal qualities.

    2FP00XB United States Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Unity Summit from White House in Washington, DC on Wednesday, May 19, 2021.Credit: Jemal Countess/Pool via CNP /MediaPunch
    The harsh assessments you hear about Harris seem to emanate out of an America so bifurcated that no nuance is possible. All the main players – Trump, Biden, Harris, Obama – are either good or evil, geniuses or idiots, heroes or villains. America is a place no longer permitted shades of grey. This seems to go against one’s day-to-day observations of human nature where human complexity comes at us from every quarter; it can’t be, surely, that the United States has successfully disinvented our right to hold more than one opinion about a person.

    This Manichean view of the world also seems unhelpful since the problems which America faces – from Afghanistan to inflation, to infrastructure, voting rights, and urban crime – are complex and probably can’t be solved if the atmosphere in which they’re discussed is reductive, and in some areas of the media, puerile.

    But equally, Heather surely has a point that Harris is struggling hugely in the office.

    Even so, the only way to see past this somewhat Manichean argument is to delve further – and especially into what actually happens when Kamala Harris has been in charge of something.

    Orders from the DA

    By 1989, Harris had graduated from University of California, Hastings College of Law, where she earned her Juris Doctor degree. During that time, the future Vice-President was the President of the Black Law Students Association. Her decision to work in the DA’s office, which by this time she had come to deem her ‘calling’, was met with incredulity by friends and family. “I had to defend my choice as one would a thesis,” she recalls in The Truths We Hold.

    Why might Harris have had such a difficult time in defending her choice of career? She herself gives the answer: “America has a deep and dark history of people using the power of the prosecutor as an instrument of injustice.”

    But Harris had found her matier. In 1990 she began working in the Alameda County District Attorney’s office. She initially specialised in child sexual assault cases, before becoming Deputy District Attorney. Then, she prosecuted various cases including sexual assault, robbery, and homicide.

    At this time, Harris was moving in exalted circles. By 1993, Willie Brown, a noted lawyer and civil rights leader, was the speaker of the California assembly and regarded as one of the State’s most influential legislators. By 1996, he had become Mayor of San Francisco, the first African-American to hold that office. Though he was still married at the time (though separated), he was known to be going out with Harris, which has incurred negative comment in some quarters, with Harris accused of sleeping her way to the top. The accusation may be a sensitive one; Brown isn’t mentioned at all in Harris’ memoir.

    By 2004, was the District Attorney in California, a post she would hold until 2011. In time it would prove a sound basis from which to launch her political career. How did she do?

    Seth Chazin has been a criminal defence lawyer in San Francisco for 35 years and serves on the board of directors of the National Association of Criminal Defence Lawyers. What are his memories of Harris’ stint as DA? “When she was District Attorney, I didn’t find her to be overly progressive in terms of policies towards criminal defendants. I didn’t see much change from prior District Attorneys.” In the context of Californian politics then, Harris has always seemed moderate – and it was partly this which informed her struggles in the 2020 primary. “She found it hard to raise money in California – that should tell you something,” says Heather. “It’s the most moneyed state in the country, and she was out-raised by Pete Buttigeig, the Mayor of the fourth largest city in Indiana.”

    So what would Chazin hope Harris could do now? Chazin is unequivocal: “She needs to push for abolition of the death penalty at the Federal level. What happened at the end of the Trump administration was horrific, they were killing one person after another.” Chazin continues: “There is a moratorium on the death penalty in California, but we need abolition. Another governor could come in with a different opinion, and the moratorium could end in a heartbeat.”

    No less a figure than Sir Richard Branson is prepared to agree with Chazin on this: “The death penalty is inhumane and barbaric, fails to deter or reduce crime and is disproportionately used against minorities and other vulnerable and marginalised groups,” he tells Finito World.

    Harris also disappointed Chazin on another front: “In terms of racial disparities, I saw no affirmative effort to handle the disparity in sentencing in drug cases, and I was dealing with a lot of drug cases at the time. Most people being prosecuted for drug offences in San Francisco were black and brown people during her tenure as District Attorney.”

    Dr Randall Heather adds: “Kamala Harris was considered overly authoritarian as Attorney-General, and this upset a lot of people on the more progressive side of the party – the group called The Squad. They do not particularly like Kamala Harris.”

    This is part of the difficulty Harris faces: she has set considerable expectations on account of the ‘historic’ nature of her election, but, like Barack Obama, she must govern -co-govern – in prose. It’s a reminder that the first generation of Black leaders had something profound to convey about equality and racial disparity which will always echo through history, and rightly so.

    After that, it was up to Barack Obama to prove that African-Americans could serve at the top of government. Harris has proven that too. But of course, there are diminishing returns here, as each glass ceiling is broken. It becomes harder to identify a moral imperative of similar force once a gigantic moral ill has been remedied. As a case in point, Kamala Harris’ portfolio of voting rights in the Biden administration has met with the intractable fact that the Democrats have neither the votes for the legislation, nor the votes to remove the Senate filibuster in order to navigate that fact.

    Harris is defiant in interview: “I think we have to continue to elevate the conversation about voting rights,” she tells Brennan. “Given the daily grind that people are facing, this may not feel like an immediate or urgent matter when in fact it is.” And yet, as important as the issue undoubtedly is, barring some sort of carve-out of the filibuster, Harris looks to be struggling to deliver.

    Allied to these problems is the enormous question of whether the fundamental economic principles which Democrats espouse – spending, essentially – really work. This brings us onto the gigantic question of inflation in relation both to the pandemic and to Biden and Harris’s flagship legislation.

    The Economy, Stupid

    Biden and Harris have so far passed two large spending bills. First up was the American Rescue Plan Act, a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, which saw the government mailing cheques of $1,400 dollars to families affected by the virus. This was followed by the vast Infrastructure and Investment Act which came with a similar price tag of £2 trillion. This development might have been specifically designed to annoy former President Donald Trump who had wanted to sign a similar bill into law but had failed.

    These are big numbers, but the bills found controversy when leading economists, including Larry Summers, the former Secretary of State to the Treasury under Obama, wondered whether such high spending would prove inflationary. In short will this legislation work?

    If you want to know what’s actually going on in the global economy during the Biden-Harris era, you need to talk to one of the masters of it. Formerly of WPP, Sir Martin Sorrell is the longest-serving FTSE 250 CEO. He now heads up S4 Capital, his fast-growing venture which is securing impressive market share, and employs some 5,500 people across 33 countries.

    Sorrell is clear that inflation will be the main discussion in 2022: “It will be big,” he tells us. “Clients will look for price increases to cover commodity increases. But the real question is whether inflation is endemic.” And is it? “We clearly have shortages in the labour supply and supply chain disruption. A lot of companies will be looking to cover that up with price increases, and I expect inflation to be well above trend.”

    That certainly sounds like more than a bump in the road. So what does Sorrell think will happen in the crucial mid-term elections towards the end of 2022? “Biden and Harris say the mid-terms will go well for Democrats,” says Sorrell. “I don’t think that will happen. We’ll get deadlock after the midterms so all significant legislation will need to have been passed before that point.”

    That doesn’t bode well for serious action in Harris’ portfolio, especially in respect of voting rights, and it’s a reminder that there’s limited time for Biden and Harris to pass their massive spending plan Build Back Better – originally mooted as having an impossible $3 trillion figure attached to it – which so far has been held by up by conservative Democrat Senator Joe Manchin from Virginia.

    Despite the likelihood of a tough road ahead, Sorrell isn’t critical of every move that Biden and Harris have made. “The infrastructure spending was needed,” says Sorrell. “If you look at infrastructure spending as a portion of GDP, the US doesn’t feature well.”

    So does Sorrell think that inflation as a problem is one of the administration’s own creation? “If you look at these bills, they are by their nature inflationary,” Sorrell replies, adding: “Inflation is not transitory. I hesitate to say it’s endemic as that’s a bad analogy with Covid-19, but I don’t think it will soften this year. I just get the feeling from clients that where they can get price increases they will go for it.”

    That doesn’t bode well for the global economy in 2022. In addition, other commentators are prepared to add their voices to the criticisms of Bidenomics. The macroeconomist Robert Barro, the Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University, is concerned about the trend of governments printing money: “Biden and Harris’ monetary policy is remarkably expansionary. It involves short term nominal interest rates of essentially zero, while continuing with the Quantitative Easing (QE) policy of buying $120 billion a month.” So what is the administration buying? “Mostly Treasury securities, but they’ve also bought some mortgage-backed securities. Corresponding to that, they’ve accumulated about $8 trillion dollars on the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve. You’re talking about a GDP of $20-21 trillion, so $8 trillion is a serious number, even though we’ve had inflation now for over 12 months they haven’t cut back on this. They should have moved a long time ago towards tapering their purchases and raising interest rates, and of course they haven’t done either of those.”

    For Barro this is out of control stuff: “Basically, the Treasury is issuing bonds to finance a lot of the expenditure – that’s the fiscal deficit part – then the Federal Reserve is turning around and buying a lot of those bonds and accumulating those on its balance sheet.” And on other side of the Fed’s balance sheet? “That’s where you would find something that looks like money, and that’s a combination of currency and reserves held by financial institutions. So those have correspondingly gone up to close to $8 trillion dollars. It’s classic inflationary finance.”

    By this reading, government policy has created a genuinely inflationary economy that can’t be attributed solely to the circumstances of the pandemic. If you want to curtail that, the only honest response is to raise interests and stop spending – two things the Biden administration seems reluctant to do.

    Vice President Kamala Harris takes her official portrait Thursday, March 4, 2021, in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)
    All of which makes Joe Manchin’s refusal to commit to Build Back Better look wise. When asked about this, Harris digs in: “Goldman Sachs just today said that actually, we know that Build Back Better will strengthen the economy,” she tells Brennan. “Not only is it morally right to say parents shouldn’t have to struggle to take care of their basic needs like caring for their children and their parents – and their parents and their elder relatives. But it actually makes economic sense to do that and it brings down the cost of living.”

    Yet there are no real signs that Biden or Harris take inflation seriously. Barro is particularly unconvinced by Biden’s decision to reappoint Jay Powell to be Head of the Federal Reserve: “What he really needed was a tough person oriented towards the banking system and to the idea that keeping inflation low is a major mission of the central bank. A figure like Jamie Dimon from JP Morgan would have been a remarkable signal that they’re finally getting serious. Even Larry Summers, who I disagree with on many things, we’re in agreement on this inflation problem and how it interacts with the monetary authority, so Larry Summers could have been named head of the Federal Reserve. Something like that could have been a great signal.”

    Dr Randall Heather agrees with all this, pointing out that the Producer Price Index (PPI) is now at a thirty year high. He also notes that in November, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) had risen by 6.8 per cent from the year earlier, the biggest 12-month jump in 39 years. “Despite that, the Biden administration is acting as though Covid is still going full blast and we need trillions more. The infrastructure bill you can get Republicans to support. But Build Back Better is pork-laden. There’s $400 billion for child tax credits which won’t have a lasting impact – it’s money you’ll burn through.”

    For Heather there’s a difference between government spending for a road, and government spending for a child going to nursery for a day: the day will pass; the road, if it’s built well, should still be there for future generations. Likewise, plenty of Covid cheques from both Trump and Biden simply went into people’s savings accounts: the problem is one of corporate and government debt, not personal debt. “The trouble is you can’t deal with inflation too strictly or else you crash the stock market. So they’ll have to let it run,” he explains.

    The Special Relationship

    So what does the situation in the US mean for the UK economy? In the first place, inflation seems to be catching: for instance, some energy economists argue that Biden’s climate change policies are being felt at the pump in prices in the UK.

    But in other respects, the broader outlook is one of continuity when it comes to US-UK relations. Iain Dale says: “If you look at presidencies, there’s a surprising degree of continuity between them. There are a lot of similarities, for instance, between Barack Obama’s foreign policy and Donald Trump’s – and between Donald Trump’s and Biden’s.”

    Duncan Edwards, the CEO of BritishAmerican Business, argues that there’s an inherent stability in the US-UK relationship, which neither a good nor a bad president can easily unpick. “In general, the US-UK relationship is in good shape,” Edwards tells me. “There are always bumps in the road under any administration, but there are things which connect the US and the UK – such as security and intelligence co-operation – and these things underpin the Special Relationship. The Pentagon and the Department for Defence work incredibly closely together.”

    Or as Kamala Harris said in a joint press conference with Prime Minister Boris Johnson on 21st September 2021: “The relationship between our two countries is a long and enduring one, based on shared priorities.” But since the FDR presidency, it would be difficult to find a single president or vice-president who hasn’t felt it necessary to trot out similar platitudes at some point in their tenure.

    Even so, that doesn’t stop Harris’ assessment being true. Edwards also explains the economic ties between the two nations are greater than any presidency. “The economic relationship is very strong because of the sheer scale of the trade in goods services and, of course, the huge capital that has been committed by American companies in the UK – and UK companies into the US.”

    So far, so good. But not all that’s happened under Biden and Harris has been good for UK business. For instance, Trump’s willingness to strike a trade deal – the 45th President’s Anglophilia has often been underplayed by a critical UK media – has now been replaced by Biden’s reluctance. Edwards explains: “The UK made significant progress on a trade agreement before the 2020 election, but trade agreements are not a priority of this administration, since they’re aiming for a heavy agenda domestically.”

    That’s a major shift. Edwards adds that, living in New York, he’s seen UK ministers come and go during the Biden-Harris administration – and to little avail. “We’ve had Anne-Marie Trevelyan, Penny Mordaunt and Nadine Dorries, and all these visits are about trying to move the ball on trade, and I don’t think they’re going to make much progress.”

    This reminds us of how a simplistic view of Trump – whose Scottish ancestry, and his Scottish golf courses, made him an eager partner with Britain – can lead to a simplistic view of Biden and Harris.

    Edwards continues: “Trump was much more pro-trade than Biden, but unfortunately most of the commentary on this is pretty surface. The reason why Trump was seen as anti-trade was because he condemned the behaviour of China, which doesn’t behave according to the rules – a belief which Biden shares. Trump was also critical of the EU, which is a highly protectionist organisation. If you don’t like Trump for other reasons, that was way too simplistic an analysis.”

    So for all Trump’s talk of Making America Great Again, he was far less protectionist than Biden and Harris. Edwards adds: “One of the first things Biden did was sign an Executive Order, making IT difficult for foreign companies to win government contracts in the US. By nature, the left tends to be more protectionist than the right. Their emphasis is on protecting jobs, and that’s why with the Biden administration it’s America first.”

    Madame President?

    None of this is necessarily Kamala Harris’ fault since many have noted her own powerlessness in the Biden administration. As against this, it must be said that Biden’s policies are echoed throughout Harris’ The Truths We Hold so it seems unlikely that economically she’d prove much different from Biden.

    But it will matter hugely to her personally, since by 2024, it’s likely – barring any further ‘variants of concern’ – that the state of the economy will decide her political fate at some stage.

    Some of the people we spoke with held out hope that Harris might improve if she were to make it all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: “I don’t have any reason to predict that she would be massively different from Biden in policy,” says Robert Barro. “She hasn’t excelled as Vice-President, but I can’t tell if that’s because she’s been given opportunities and blown them or if she hasn’t been given those opportunities.” That at least seems to give her some wiggle room.

    So how will this all play out? I ask Iain Dale whether he thinks Harris will assume the presidency. “There are three ways this is going to go,” he tells me. “Either she becomes president because Biden dies or is incapacitated in some way which is entirely possible. That’s one possibility. The other is that they make it to 2024 and she runs; and then either she wins or she doesn’t. I cannot conceive Biden can run for a second term. He’d be 82. I just can’t see it.”

    And so she’ll have to fight for the nomination? “There’s no way the Democrats will let her walk into it. I suspect she wouldn’t – which would be a bit of a disaster in terms of people thinking, ‘Ah well, America’s not ready for a woman, and not ready for a black woman’. So she needs to up her game a bit over the next year – well, a lot.”

    For Sir Martin Sorrell, Harris’ weakness and the lack of ready alternatives, is a clear opening for Donald Trump to return: “I think we’ll see a Trump in 2024 – either Trump himself, or personally I wouldn’t underestimate Ivanka. Of course, it’s a puzzle. Things can change. It’s still very early on, Kamala’s ratings can change over time, but people are negative at the moment.” As a man who understands the online world extremely well, Sorrell is especially interested in the launch of Trump’s platform TRUTH which is scheduled for 24th February 2022. “It’s interesting what he’s doing – he’s creating an echo chamber. Those who wrote Trump off are going to be surprised. The trouble is we talk to one another in our own echo chamber – people on the East or the West coast. But I was talking the other day to a CEO of a leading packages company who’d just gone through the South on his motorbike. He’d been through Alabama, Kentucky and Mississippi, and everywhere there were Trump signs.”

    Former Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation Sam Gyimah puts her chances a little higher: “She’s vice president which means if Biden isn’t running she will seek the nomination. That’s how Hillary ended up being the candidate. She will have a strong claim. But if her poll numbers are bad she might not make it through the primaries.”

    So in a sense, though she mightn’t like it, everything will depend on her own performance as vice-president – her showing, if you will, in the famous bucket of warm piss.

    Dale is among those who argue that Harris needs to grasp the nettle if she’s to stand a chance: “If you judge by the poll ratings so far, she’s performed pretty disastrously. That might be partly her fault; it might be Biden’s fault for not carving out a role for her. But if you’re VP without a job description, it’s up to you to carve out your job description yourself and I’m not sure she’s done a very good job of that.”

    So is her position salvageable? Dale thinks that she must learn not to air grievances that she has been given difficult portfolios especially when compared to Pete Buttigieg – her likely rival in 2024 – who is perceived to be having a better time as Transportation Secretary than Harris is as Veep. “If you’re seen as a whinger that’s not a good place to be,” continues Dale. “You’re there as a politician to solve difficult issues. Pete Buttigieg is the Transportation Secretary and therefore that does come within his remit. What she needs to do is knuckle down to the jobs she has been given because nobody’s going to have any sympathy for him.”

    For Heather, the signs for Harris are bad. He argues that the 44th President Barack Obama still effectively controls the party, since he is by far the best at raising money. He adds that Harris’ difficult portfolio is a reflection of the fact that the powers-that-be – all of them Obama-ites – don’t view her as presidential material. “You have to ask why she was given these things. Immigration is hard – because it’s fricking hard. Voting rights is hard because it’s the states and not the federal government which control the voting rules unless they want to overturn the constitution. She was deliberately given these things – she got two hospital passes they don’t expect her to do well on.”

    On the other hand, there are still plenty of people who wish her well, and not just Californians. A profound patriotism still exists in the American soul. John Updike’s character Rabbit Angstrom in the famous Rabbit tetralogy was always inclined to love the person who happened to be President at whatever time. There are plenty of Americans like that today who would wish Harris well were she to assume office – and would like her to do better now.

    So the stakes are high and the jury’s out. It’s only a year in from her time in the Vice-Presidency, and the clock is already ticking for her to prove she has what it takes to make it all the way to the Oval Office.

  • Dr. Todd Swift’s advice to young people on a career in publishing

    Dr. Todd Swift’s advice to young people on a career in publishing

    Todd Swift has spent a lifetime on the front line of literature as a publisher, poet, and writer of film scripts. Here he discusses the future of publishing

    If we have learned one thing from the pandemic, it’s that people seek comfort in stories. That these stories are often nowadays told in videogames, or on streaming TV services, or in Tweets and other brief image-based social networks, does not change a fundamental truth – stories arise from story-tellers, and most of those are writers. To extend that logic, most writers ultimately want to see their words published in books. Books, as we know, now evolve into many forms of adapted species, from electronic, to audio, and on to game, film, TV series, meme – and, yes, Halloween costume. JK Rowling may have her detractors, but she still launches a thousand Potters on October 31st. 

    All these stories, when gathered, and published, one way or the other, are the responsibility of publishers – and publishers need people to work with, and for, them. Apprenticeships, mentorships, and other programmes, are available online and in person, and in the post-vaccine days of the hopefully sunlit uplands to come, the young people of today could well be on the road to a job in publishing in a more socially pleasant future.  

    This article is meant to be a hopeful, if practical, and very brief guide to what they may face, should expect, and need to do, in order to best prepare for the interview and the potential jobs ahead, from editor, to typesetter, to book designer, to marketing or PR person; and concomitantly, what publishing faces when meeting them. 

    The only preparation for working in publishing is to read. A recent story in the news about a rock star in his fifties who had never read a book until lockdown, then read dozens, shows it is never too late to acquire the gift of ravenous literacy. But for a young person wanting to work in the book trade, an earlier relationship with them is essential. This may have once sounded elitist; it may well still sound so. But the good news is that libraries and online word hoards like Project Gutenberg make it less difficult for any person to find the great works they need to dive into.  

    A second skill – and it arises from the art and joy of reading – is writing. No one working in publishing can expect to get far without some ability with gramma and spelling. If you are the sort of GCHQ person who corrects books with a nibbled pencil stub when you read them, you will do well. Again, though, we have moved on from the old days. Enlightened pedagogy means that even people with dyslexia now work in publishing, even in proofreading. 

    The educational profile for younger people working in publishing has been an issue in the press and wider world of discussion of late. It is probably accurate to say that there was a time when you’d find the Bright Young Things of Bloomsbury beautifully dressed and cleverly down from Oxbridge with a First in Classics.  

    While this sort of clubbable coterie is ever-present, the truth is that almost all universities in the UK and beyond offer Publishing and Creative Writing degrees, from BAs to PhDs. The best-known course may be UEA in the fens of Norwich, where Ian McEwan famously studied, but it is no longer unique. Further, in the age of LGBTQ, Biden-Harris, BLM and MeToo, publishing houses are in dire need of being yanked, pushed and thrown into the 21st century. While many of the smaller independent presses (like ours) are able to be more flexible, the larger companies, replete with the pale and stale males still wearing their spattered ties from that long Soho lunch with Ian Hamilton in Soho from the 70s, have been less nimble, more oil tankerish. But even they have recently taken on board the calls to arms and hastened to appear desirably open to all. 

    It may be unfair to characterise young people as being hip to the latest trends, but youth, by definition, can never be late to the party. It should be said that the direction in publishing can only benefit those who have an awareness of TikTok binary identities, ambiguous pronouns, James Baldwin’s resurgence, and Billie Eilish.   

    On the other hand, we could also do with learning a little wisdom and restraint in publishing. This was seen recently, when junior sub-sub-editors and many up the chain of command refused to work on books by famous actors and writers whose alleged behaviour or opinions differ from their own. To a man in his mid-50s, like myself, freedom of speech means publishing Morrissey, Larkin and Peterson, warts and all, as well as Das Kapital and Mein Kampf. It means having a broad and morally demanding list, capable of accommodating both Richard Dawkins and the latest Archbishop with a laptop and some spare time. Not so for the young of today, the ‘milkshakes’ as I call them. For them, only the just and right-on should be free to speak; the ones who profited from injustice for eons should now step aside. 

    There is, of course, another curious incident of moral and philosophical disconnection between the generations. That’s the understanding of how capitalism works with regards to literary and commercial enterprises. Since many young people in publishing are left-leaning, their sympathies are not with owners or directors, seeking to maximise profit, though by law, companies in the UK must not intentionally lose money or avoid profit.  

    The ideal view is that books should be as free from the taint of money as possible – yet the industry they enter is enmeshed in a centuries-old cutthroat market system. Agents and writers seeking sales and royalties complicate the story, for you may often encounter a mild-mannered Marxist poet, or writer’s union official, whose work challenges the structure of Western industry at every stage, yet who demands top dollar for their writing, and wants their books to sell in bookshops and online without discount. Poets, especially, seem torn between wanting readers (and the cheaper the edition, the more readers one gets) versus wanting money.

    The fact is the old ways of publishing are being swept away. This is one reason why, despite most bookshops being closed for many months in 2020 and 2021, my smallish press did not collapse at once. Like every other publishing house we have begun already to diversify, and even before the pandemic, were somewhat insulated from the worst of social distancing. Now audiobooks and eBooks represent far more of the sales; print on demand allows for a back list to be digitally available globally without large overhead; and new distribution channels arise to try to compete with Amazon. 

    It can be tempting to be overly bullish at a time of great depression. False bravado cannot mask the poverty of our cultural moment. As the book becomes a delivery system for preconceived comforting images and tropes, the danger of The Book has been somewhat forgotten. My company supports free speech in the traditional broad church sense. Our motto is: No book is better being burnt than being placed in a library for posterity. Judgement is never really ours; it is temporal. We are dust after we are dancers. 

    Working at a smaller, independent press has both the disadvantages of working freelance or part-time but also the freedoms and flexibilities that come with it. A quick glance on the Internet will show that even in London the media salary for a junior editor at a large well-known publishing house is often under 22K, and even experienced editors take years to reach above 30K. The financial rewards of a career in publishing are not therefore likely to be magnificent. To work part-time for a small indie press, therefore, means being able to seek other rewards and even study (or train), but it may be nail-biting. But then is not all the world nail-biting, now? 

    Books have endings. I always advise writers to end their books with an echo of the first sentences of the first chapter. Seamus Heaney would, following Robert Frost, always remove the final poem in a collection, and keep it to start his next. As I write this article, the world is in ferment, but it is potentially transforming itself. Publishing, perhaps, can become enriched by new thinking, new technologies, and new politics. As in so many walks of life, the old will step aside, as the young run past, to see if the bookshop doors are open again, come the end of this pandemic.

    Todd Swift is the director of the Black Spring publishing group.

  • Poll exclusive: Boris Johnson still enjoys strong support

    Despite being forced to resign, Boris Johnson still enjoys widespread grassroots support among Conservative Party members, a new survey finds. According to a poll conducted by Folkestone and Hythe Conservative Association on the 14th of July, and seen by Finito World, 49.4% of Grassroots Conservative Party Members would support him if he was on the ballot paper.

    Boris Johnson will leave office after the summer and has said he is leaving with his ‘head held high’. This assessment appears to be shared by Conservative affiliates. Here are the numbers in full:

    Boris Johnson: 49.4%

    Penny Mordaunt 24.4%

    Rishi Sunak 10.4%

    Liz Truss 6.7%

    Suella Braverman 3%

    Tom Tugendhat 4.3%

    Kemi Badenoch 1.8%

    The survey consisted of a data pool of 167 verified responses, and reveals fascinating trends, amounting to an intriguing snapshot of the crucial voters beyond the parliamentary party who will ultimately decide who is the next Prime Minister.

    Folkestone & Hythe Conservative Association Chairman, Stephen James, said: “Boris Johnson appears to still have wide support amongst my fellow members and some have even called for Boris Johnson to be added as a third name in the leadership contest. It is often said that the ‘Westminster Bubble’ isn’t a true reflection of the wider country, and this poll seems to support that premise.”

    Asked what the key issues are for his members, James added: “Brexit, Furlough, Vaccines, and Ukraine are all issues that Boris can be proud of, and I think many will lament his departure. It will be interesting to see if Boris Johnson will use this support to influence the leadership race or if like his hero, Sir Winston Churchill, he will make a comeback… Boris Act II.”

    However, the poll was also further good news for Penny Mordaunt, and further unsettling news for the other camps. In a poll without Boris, the results are as follows, with the former Defence Secretary out in front by an eye-popping margin:

    Penny Mordaunt 52.7%

    Rishi Sunak 13.9%

    Liz Truss 13.9%

    Suella Braverman 6.1%

    Tom Tugendhat 7.9%

    Kemi Badenoch 5.5%

    Finito World News Director Christopher Jackson said: “Much can happen still in this race, but this latest poll only confirms that all the momentum at the moment is with Penny Mordaunt. It’s clear that in a crowded field she has managed to cut through among Tory grassroots in a way that none of the other candidates has been able to do.”

     

    Penny Mordaunt MP

     

    The Member of Parliament for Folkestone & Hythe, Damian Collins MP added on Twitter: “Penny Mordaunt is a team player and a leader you can trust. She has a track record of service that will make her an outstanding Prime Minister #PM4PM.”