He Would Say That

I heard Rupert Soames on the Radio 4 Today programme yesterday lamenting that government does not have enough people who “understand business”. He even nodded in advance to the obvious point that he would say that. Quite.

It is worth being clear about what sort of business he means, and the route by which he himself reached the top. This is not the story of an entrepreneur who built something from nothing. It is the classic British elite corporate pathway.

Public school. Oxford. PPE. A tour of large corporates like Xerox and Unipart. Then board appointed chief executive roles. First Aggreko, a specialist equipment hire firm selling largely to governments and major corporates. Then Serco, whose core business is not competing in open consumer markets but bidding for public contracts. Prisons, probation, immigration centres, defence support, NHS services. The state as principal customer.

That is not an insult. It is simply a description. Serco does not thrive despite government. It thrives because of government. Its expertise lies in procurement frameworks, fixed price contracts, and the careful management of risk and blame when outsourcing goes wrong.

There is another detail that is rarely mentioned, because it is impolite in Britain to say it out loud. Soames is Winston Churchill’s grandson. That is not a footnote. In the world of boardrooms, ministers, and institutional investors, it is an asset. Not a magic key, but a lubricant. It smooths introductions, reassures committees, and confers seriousness before a CV is read. In a system built on trust, familiarity, and signalling, those marginal advantages matter.

None of this means he is incompetent. He is clearly not. But it does mean his experience of “business” is very specific. Managed capitalism, not entrepreneurial risk. Firms intertwined with the state, not exposed to it. Boards, not start ups.

So when Soames says ministers do not understand business, what he really means is that they do not think like large outsourcing contractors, nor do they emerge from the same narrow pipeline of schools, networks, and assumptions. Fewer familiar faces. Less automatic deference.

There is also a basic category error that business lobbyists never quite escape. Government is not a firm. It cannot drop unprofitable customers, abandon loss making services, or quietly walk away when a model fails. Its job is to balance competing interests, deliver universal services, and plan over decades rather than quarters. That requires law, economics, and administrative competence, not a CEO job title.

We have already tested the idea that the country should be run as if it were a business. The Truss experiment treated the UK like a start up powered by tax cuts and vibes. It lasted 44 days and ended with the bond market administering a sharp lesson in reality.

The deeper failure of the past decade was not that government ignored business. It listened too much to a very narrow slice of it. Outsourcers, consultants, and lobbyists were indulged while state capacity was hollowed out and long term planning was treated as optional.

So yes, he would say that. It is his job. But when a man whose career was built on selling services to the state complains that the state does not understand business, what he is really asking for is not competence. It is deference.