One answer is that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has a mandate given him by the Prime Minister, by his party and by the nation that has elected him into Government. We get what we vote for and while the Mansion House Reforms weren’t in the the 2019 manifesto, they are unlikely to be enacted till the final days of this Government (if then).
Another answer is that letters of support don’t get supported. Most don’t get published and those that do get shot down on social media. Meanwhile, letters that criticize are generally liked, because it’s easy.
Thirdly, those who are keen to get things done are focused on using channels that promote positive action. Witness the way that City of London Mayor, Nicholas Lyons uses Linked in.
The Mansion House Reforms are collectively positive, they are aimed at getting better value for the money we put into pensions as well as making the money the tax-payer puts behind pensions, work harder for the country.
They call for a redistribution of money allocated to non-productive investment to productive investment and behind them is a spirit of endeavor that rewards entrepreneurship, risk-taking and innovation. All of these things can be mocked as “arm-waving” by those who don’t take risks and innovate.
There is a great unspoken energy which supports the spirit of the Mansion House Reforms. It funds venture capital through EIS and SEIS , those who have a project that needs funding can resort to crowd-funding through platforms such as Seedrs. Charitable sites such as Just Giving ensure that good things get done. When they are, they are celebrated, not denigrated, on Facebook pages and websites set up to say please and thankyou.
Apart from the baying mob, whose comments litter the financial press, there is a benevolent majority whose aims are aligned with Christian , Muslim, Jewish and humanist values of fairness and sharing (my list in not exclusive). This benevolent (typically silent) majority, has a latency and it’s what the poet Keats refers to in a famous letter
several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason
The key to negative capability is “being in uncertainty” without irritable reaching after fact and reason”.
So here is the fourth reason why we don’t see many people writing letter of support of the Mansion House reforms in the FT. It is that the reforms reach out to uncertainty and do not seek to justify their ambition with fact and reason. Rather, they tap into the negative capability, the power of the unseen and unheard.
There are no letters reasoning for the Mansion House reforms, because they speculate that things will happen from actions yet to be taken. They tap our negative capability.
Christopher Columbus did not have an evidence based business plan, we do not go to church for a return on investment. We do things because we know they are the right thing to do.
