Did you see this damning critique of the Tories?

I'm not the only person saying that there isn't a pro-business party in this election (my post of 19 May) and David Smith isn't the only Sunday Times journalist who is deeply unimpressed by the Tories and their manifesto. An editorial column* by Iain Dey, the paper's business editor, on 21 May was remarkable for its tone and language as well as its content. Dey's piece read more like one of my rants - remarkable stuff in an editorial, let alone of a Murdoch newspaper. His comments included:

• to be lectured about meritocracy and the cult of "selfish individualism" by May reeks of hypocrisy. She got to where she is due, in most part, to the incompetent plotting of others
• "running through all 84 pages of her manifesto is a snide, chippy assumption that everyone at the top of business somehow got there by rigging the system"
• noting that business is more meritocratic than politics and that chapter one of the Tory manifesto, on the economy, makes no mention of financial services, our biggest source of tax receipts, he said "If she wants to find a great British meritocracy, the PM could ask her husband for a tour of the square mile - if he isn't too busy taking the bins out"
• "When I challenge front bench Conservatives on their anti-business stance they look at me askance. They seem ignorant of the damage they are doing"
• "...the message running through everything they do and say is that business is only a good thing if it is small and local. Very few business people want to stay small"

He concluded by saying that "A nation of entrepreneurs is a nation of selfish individualists. Collectively, their efforts generate growth" and quoting John Stuart Mill from On Liberty: "The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each as seems good to the rest."

In his column the following week he noted that some prominent business figures, including Sir Mike Rake (chairman of BT) and  Edward Bonham Carter (founder of Jupiter Asset Management) had attacked May's "lurch to the left". But, constructively, he offered the Tories some pointers from his discussions with business leaders on what a pro-business manifesto would look like:

1. the new industrial strategy should make some big bets on a handful of industrial sectors (something I don't think we could do while in the EU) and
2. address the skills shortage and offset the damage the clampdown on immigration will cause  by stealing part of Corbyn's policy of scraping university tuition fees - but only for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects.

I've often thought that the market feedback signals to students selecting their subjects (employment and pay levels) are too weak and too slow to work effectively. I've suggested in the past having "quotas" in different subjects according to the needs of the economy which get some form of subsidy - so you can study what you want but there is a way of encouraging people to study useful subjects in the numbers we need. The annual quota would be thousands in medicine, science, maths and engineering and might be rather lower in sports science and media studies: but if that's what you want to do you can still get a loan and do it. Dey's idea is much simpler and , even as a free marketer, I think it's a good one.

*Who Speaks For Business in this Election? Iain Dey, Sunday Times 21 May 2107