As the catharsis of electoral rejection gives way to the long march of opposition, Republicans might reflect on the experience of Britain’s Conservative party, which in 1997 suffered its worst poll defeat since 1832. Two further defeats followed. By the next election, due by June 2010, the Conservatives will have been out of office longer than they have been at any time since the middle of the 19th century.
At the conclusion Thursday of the last party conference season before next year’s general election, David Cameron, leader of Britain’s Conservative party, had every right to be encouraged. The media are treating Mr. Cameron as the prime minister-elect and Labour’s conference confirmed that the party is stuck with Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Labour’s biggest electoral liability.
Rarely has the Atlantic seemed as wide as when America’s health-care debate provoked a near unanimous response from British politicians boasting of the superiority of their country’s National Health Service. Prime Minister Gordon Brown used Twitter to tell the world that the NHS can mean the difference between life and death. His wife added, “we love the NHS.” Opposition leader David Cameron tweeted back that his plans to outspend Labour showed the Conservatives were more committed to the NHS than Labour.
Keynesians howled last week when Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, announced his intention to shrink the budget deficit by more than the previous Labour government. The fiscal squeeze would plunge Britain into a 1930s-style depression. Where would demand come from with the rest of the world limping out of recession? Mr. Osborne’s Labour predecessor joined the chorus, suggesting that for all his plans to cut public spending if Labour had won the election, Alistair Darling would always have found excuses for delay.
Tomorrow’s British election is on course to be only the third time in 31 years that the country has changed its government. Margaret Thatcher swept the Conservatives into power in 1979 and Tony Blair ushered in a period of Labour Party control in 1997. Yet an election that to many appeared a certain victory for David Cameron and the Conservatives turned out to be an unexpected roller coaster of a ride.
In March 2010, the White House Writers Group along with Bloomberg, The Torrenzano Group, and CED held a Bloomberg Boards & Risk Briefing in New York City on changes to proxy rules that will have a tremendous impact on American corporations.
It was a half-day briefing on these new developments and what information, strategies, and techniques executives need to address them. There were discussions and presentations with leading experts in corporate governance, law, public policy, strategic communications, and investor relations.
Issue Overview
The regulatory reach of Washington is pulling together a qualitatively different kind of economy for America. The alphabet agencies – from the FCC to the FTC – are fighting with gusto and attacking with new and complex regulatory issues.
The SEC is preparing new access-to-the-proxy rules while legislators propose rules on “say-on-pay,” additional powers for financial regulators, as well as new legislative proposals on corporate governance and non-shareholder rights. The EPA is reversing judgments, thereby initiating sweeping reviews of scientific issues believed long settled.
At the individual company level, activists, unions, and special interest groups are skillfully using new technologies to drive their narrow agendas, affect board voting, and disrupt annual meetings.
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Behind Washington’s Closed Doors: What Will Happen Next?
Clark S. Judge, Managing Director, White House Writers Group
Two years after the fall of Lehman Brothers, Oliver Stone has a new film about the world of high finance. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps opens in theaters next week. It’s a sequel to his 1987 hit Wall Street – intended as portrait of the greed and ruthlessness of 1980s excess.
Unlike the original film, however, which hit theaters during a bear market, the sequel comes at a time of economic vulnerability and near-double digit unemployment. Columnist Andrew Sorkin of the New York Times describes the film as a “populist” view of Wall Street. And it’s clear Stone sees himself as an advocate for Main Street. In his conversation with Sorkin he says, “Wall Street’s gone crazy. It’s banking on steroids.” Read
In communications, there’s a fine line between making your voice heard and shooting yourself in the foot.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve been thinking a lot about Levi Johnston – the twice almost son-in-law of Sarah Palin – and how he could benefit from some communications guidance. The father of Palin’s grandson has made a career out of extending his fifteen minutes of fame – posing for Playboy, appearing in music videos, and now announcing he will run for the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. Read
On August 25, the Securities and Exchange Commission, in a partisan three-to-two vote, approved its long-awaited access-to-the-proxy rule. The rule will allow any shareholder or group of shareholders representing three percent of outstanding shares and having held them for three years to nominate directors in board elections.
As a practical matter, this means that labor unions as well as major environmental organizations and other political activists will soon be organizing to win seats. At stake will be whether boards reflect the interests of shareholders as a whole or those political interests. Many corporate managements will feel compelled to run the equivalent of internal political campaigns in order to protect the integrity of their boards.
Last November I co-authored an article on this topic in The Wall Street Journal. You can find it here.
Josh Gilder said it best when he wrote “the primary flaw in most thinking about corporate responsibility is that it assumes that all profit-making corporations are rapacious predators.”
That’s certainly the perspective American Public Media’s Marketplace holds toward American business. A recent report looked at the effect the BP oil spill has had on socially responsible investing.
At the heart of the conversation was the notion that oil and gas companies are inherently bad and therefore any direct – or indirect – investment in them is inherently irresponsible. Read