Most public servants stay away from retail. The Philip Green approach, "done and dusted, back to the beach", is not their style, any more than his apothegm: "I want to make a profit, not be a prophet."
And yet, if Sir Philip were to appeal to these amateurs for help with his fashion business, I don't doubt that, like him, they would patriotically abandon their dearest principles and, "chin up, chest out" as he put it last weekend, focus on increasing the personal gain of the retail giant and his intriguing, billionaire wife, Monaco-based Cristina Green. Surely more could be done, in these difficult times, to increase turnover in his Topshop stores? Some civil servants might advise, for instance, that the "hairy pea coat" Topshop is doing this season, fine though it looks at 200 paces, has all the immediate appeal of old carpet underlay, and they want 128 quid for it. Boden does a better one for less, in velvet. Sir Philip must be, to use the language of fashion, taking the piss. Is there really no sweatshop in the Far East where the thing could be made more cheaply?
On the other hand, the state of the sale rails and perpetual shortage of changing rooms in his Oxford Street store, where queues of drooping teens snake across the shop floor, might look like a more pressing challenge to advisers who are eager, like Sir Philip, to make a difference right away.
Unless, that is, the changing room queues are deliberate, stimulating in his customers an ever more uncontrollable desire to buy six items or fewer of disposable tat. As Sir Philip says of Whitehall: "We need to understand the process." What can outsiders say about a world which, being unprincipled and unaccountable, organised for the short term and driven by the ambitious greed of one individual has so much to teach public service? Although Sir Philip is not, perhaps thankfully, one of those businessmen-thinkers who pretends to have a philosophy to share with his disciples, he has informed business interviewers that his strategy is as follows: "It's always borrow, repay quickly and build the business." His particular talent is also easy to summarise: "I've always understood how to buy merchandise and run my businesses efficiently," he told one admirer.
However, running businesses is evidently more complex than that or Mr Green would not have failed to take over Marks & Spencer in 2004 or Safeway in 2003. Civil servants should bear in mind that their mentor might be sensitive about his backstory. When colleagues on the Guardian looked at BhS, around the time of the Safeway bid, Mr Green objected that its then financial editor, Paul Murphy, "can't read English. Mind you, he is a fucking Irishman". When that approach failed, Sir Philip (with a taste of the charm that captivates Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Moss) regretted the state of British libel laws. "You know what the shame is? If the laws of this country were like America, right? I'd love you to print that because I'd be able to close you down, put you out of your misery."
A question on the Today programme recently, about his unusual tax arrangements, appears to have prompted not dissimilar feelings about the BBC. Although he managed not to call the interviewer a "fucking tosser", perhaps because he'd already used that up on the man from CityAM, Sir Philip responded later, with what read very like a threat: "Perhaps when I finish this job, my next could be to review the strategy and costs of the BBC?"
If they ever had any doubts about choosing Sir Philip, this episode can only have confirmed to his coalition colleagues the value of their new asset, whose rhetoric makes Baron Sugar of Clapton sound like a Fimble. If Green keeps this up his entrepreneurial dazzle could outlast even David Rowland, whose flirtation with the Conservatives has just ended in disappointment.
There is not much point, after all, in begging an unelected tax avoider to lecture the country on virile, can-do efficiency if he can't swat away smug, licence fee-funded losers who will never be able to afford a pair of yachts called Lionheart and Lionchase and moor them in the harbour at Monaco. Sir Philip's shameless aggression promises far greater value, if only in terms of PR, than any previous politicians have got out of their pet magnates, from Thatcher's Lord Young to Sir Richard Branson, Sir James Dyson, Lord Sugar and, until recently, Digby Jones, who has just urged Green: "Go make a difference."
If the nature of Lord Jones's own contribution, in this respect, remains a mystery wrapped in an enigma, he attributes this fact to a combination of feeble ministers and recalcitrant civil servants: "You will be working with some of the most risk-averse people in the country."
But here comes Sir Philip, regardless, determined to show that ruthless individualism and social responsibility are, contrary to appearances, a perfect fit. Even if they can't be run like airlines, supermarkets, computer companies, vacuum cleaner factories (in Malaysia) or the global energy industry (although Lord Browne is on the case), government departments can be more like Topshop. It might or might not help him that, unlike most of his predecessors, Green's name is a red-top fixture, synonymous with extravagance, £5m birthday parties (with Green got up as Nero) and £4m bar mitzvahs, featuring Beyoncé.
His naked belly is, on its own, so famous that, pictured atop a vast pair of bathers, it would be recognised the world over in any game of match-the-face-to-the-abdomen. To his wife, though she is much less well known, goes the credit for organising Simon Cowell's 50th birthday where, an awestruck press reported, the invitations came on mirrors, the menus were black suede and visiting billionaires, having feasted on fish fingers, were entertained with giant dancing vibrators.
Even if his first big efficiency proposal, that of centralised procurement, makes Green unpopular with the myriad suppliers who would thereby be efficiently put out of business, it might be years before this dented the public image of a man whose partying puts the coalition on useful, first-name terms with an international league of yacht-lovers, from Jennifer Lopez and the more obscure Russians who supply much of this nautical hospitality, to Naomi Campbell, whose political connections extend from Charles Taylor to Sarah Brown. From Green's perspective, this can't hurt. But what about the coalition?
What was the plan? A standard, pro-business grovel? General moral affront? Or, merely, to deliver an insult the civil service would never forget: King Midas in charge of efficiency savings? Of all our business legends, Green must be the first to own a solid gold Monopoly set, a gift from his wife that features only their own acquisitions, now including a lease on Whitehall and, if he gets his way, the BBC.
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