2013-05-21T15:05:21-04:00 Cameron Penny http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=cameron-penny Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Cameron Penny Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2175317 2012-11-22T09:28:26-05:00 2013-01-22T05:12:01-05:00

Cameron Penny http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cameron-penny/
There didn't seem to be a point. But there is.

The eurosceptics will tell you that the EU is still riven by corruption, its accounts still unsigned by the Court of Auditors and its appetite for ever more stringent regulation still unchecked. They will offer up hopes of an island which can be built again on the strength of international trading relationships and a country which can innovate and excel if only it were unshackled from the bonds of EU membership.

They will screech and wail, as Professor Tim Congdon recently did, about the cost of membership - estimated as high as £150bn per year.

What they won't do is make the positive case for completion of the single market. What they won't do is to explain the double counting scandal of how much UK-specific regulation would have cost us in the past thirty years of membership and twenty years of the single market. Would we, for example, have really not regulated for ever safer motor vehicles and tighter emissions standards for cars? Would UK politicians have ignored the public's demand for food safety standards and greater employment protections? Faced with an ageing population and a lack of skilled tradespeople would a British government really never have looked to open up our borders to the benefits of immigration from Eastern European countries?

If our politicians really would have done none of these things then we'd all be the poorer for it. Not just because our legislature would have failed to do to the private sector what it should i.e. incrementally raise the bar for the benefit of all. They would have failed because our standards wouldn't have kept pace and our product would have been unsaleable in the rest of the world.

Yet this is the scenario we now face. The eurosceptics offer up a vision of the UK as the next Norway or Switzerland. Yet even UKIP supporters would have to concede a) Norway already complies with EU regulation but its position outside the Union means it has no say in influencing that regulation b) Brussels, and indeed many member states are fast losing patience with the Swiss. That model is broken and the alternative would leave us with all the cost and none of the influence.

Ultimately though the opportunism of the Labour party and the apathetic platitudes for the EU of politicians such as William Hague and David Willetts betray the great opportunity that is before us. Leaving aside - if possible - arguments about human rights or the social chapter, completion of the single market offers the entire continent a way out of economic disarray and offers us a golden opportunity. Imagine a UK-based financial services firm able to offer pensions, savings and protection products to consumers from Dublin to Riga. A manufacturer in the Midlands able to hire the best workers from a pool of 400 million souls to produce product sent from Lisbon to Budapest.

Is the EU perfect? No. There are no systems of government that are. Problems are only emphasised when trying to reconcile 27 different cultural, legal and political systems. There have been, and there will be, things given up in the task of creating a 'more perfect union'. The prize is immense. A truly single market made up of some of the richest nations on earth. The alternative is to be sidelined, to become the inheritors of a nation that is nothing more than a footnote in history. Now is not the time to slide, stroll or amble towards an exit from which there can be no return on favourable grounds. Now is the time for the prime minister to roll up his sleeves; fight to reform the EU, fight for completion of the single market and in so doing fight for the true interests of the UK.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1508517 2012-05-11T04:39:46-04:00 2012-07-10T05:12:16-04:00

Cameron Penny http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cameron-penny/
Pro-austerity parties cannot muster enough support to form a government even with wafer-thin margins and today's opinion polls show the left-wing anti-austerity party Syriza with 27.7%. If replicated in another election this summer it would leave them as the largest party by some distance.

After all the nashing and wailing from right wing commentators in the British Press (yes, you, Janet Daley) about the death of democracy and the imposition of Brussels on a sovereign state, we can at least take heart in the fact the Greeks are now voting to take control of their future. From the land that gave us democracy itself does the Eurozone now find itself truly tested.

Summit after summit has found Europe's leaders lacking. To the layman there are inescapable conclusions. First, how does extending more debt to a country that has already demonstrated an inability to carry its existing burden make sense? Second, how can austerity cauterise the economic pain the Greek economy is experiencing when it cannot benefit from a devalued currency and surplus Eurzone members refuse to grab the issue of balance transfers by the horns?

If the Eurozone is to survive then either its members must deal with the systemic issues the currency bloc creates for certain member states or it must allow those who don't fit the model to leave. That those countries arguably shouldn't have been admitted in the first instance is a hollow and somewhat debased point at this stage. The final nail in the coffin, for Greece at least, is that core Eurozone countries (France, Germany and Italy) have just lost patience.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1431703 2012-04-17T12:27:09-04:00 2012-06-17T05:12:01-04:00

Cameron Penny http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cameron-penny/
The context and nuances of each case are specific but they share a common thread; namely the willingness of a Government or a general public who are happy to let them operate. The financial crisis, which is still playing out, is a prime example of this. We haven't yet dealt with its offspring; the deficit crisis, the Eurozone crisis, the growth crisis etc. However, it seems we have moved on from the 'fear crisis' - that idea that the Government, or rather the taxpayer, had to, absolutely had to bail out the bankers. From the left and from the right the banking industry is under the microscope - criticism of the -1.44% undershoot of Merlin targets in the last quarter merely stoked the commonly held idea that "the banks" aren't doing enough.This was despite having lent tens of billions to businesses around the country.

The argument isn't just about aggregate numbers. Frankly the numbers are meaningless to most of us. Politicians of all hues, blue, yellow, red (purple and green?), can shoot statistics into their soundbites but it's jobs, houses, food and prospects that matter to us.

So the question has become less about what we need to do for business and far more about what business needs to do for us. Ultimately it's about the willingness of politicans and the public to grant businesses a license to operate. If you want a case study talk to the people at Wonga. This firm deploys a new and highly automated system that is disrupting the unsecured personal loan market in the UK. Yet the perception that they're no different to seedy high street pawnbrokers isn't just a PR problem it's a material business risk. And later this year we will learn more about the UK Government's intention to take forward the recommendations of John Kay's review on long-termism and equity structures. This promises real change for the way that businesses and their stakeholders interact.

Fundamentally the real solutions are long-term and require global agreement and co-ordination. In the short-to-medium term thought leaders, politicians, academics and businesses need to relocate the public debate. They need to take immediate actions to deliver for their constituents whether voters or customers. The insurance industry's recent campaign to stamp out the conveyor belt of dodgy claims for personal injury, which the Prime Minister championed at a recent No 10 summit, is one example of this. The financial sector also needs to better demonstrate its role in society, from funding businesses both large and small to setting the pace on how employees and customers are treated.

It's not all doom and gloom though, Barclays' recent ad for their new Pingit service, which went viral, shows that financial services can make us smile. But the industry can't take off it's post-crisis L-plates just yet. ]]>