Four years back, when Ed Miliband's Labour party suggested government intervention to arrest rising energy prices for consumers, he was labelled 'Red Ed'. At the time, Boris Johnson wrote a column for The Telegraph attacking a return to Brownite socialism. He criticised what he saw as a "fundamental impulse... to use regulation or coercion to try to impose an idea of equality, when the result is the exact opposite".
Collective responsibility and common sense dictate that we shouldn't wait around for our foreign secretary to similarly accuse his boss of 'Brownite socialism' following an election proposal this week from the Conservatives for a cap on consumer energy bills. It's a price cap rather than a freeze, proponents may argue, but a glance at the share prices of the listed utilities suggest the phrasing isn't important.
Add to this the Tory government's broadsides against our nation's landlords. One might have expected the Labour government of 1997 to 2010 to curb some of the tax benefits enjoyed by this sector, having enjoyed such capital growth. Instead, it was Chancellor George Osborne in 2015 who promised "to create a more level playing field between those buying a home to let and those who are buying a home to live in". Progressive taxation, there, from the 'austerity chancellor'.
The same Budget speech triggered an energetic double-fist pump from then work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, as Mr Osborne promised his national living wage (NLW) for workers aged 25 and over. That will reach £9 an hour by 2020. He added a levy on larger companies to fund 3m apprenticeships, and the next year introduced a sugar levy for the soft drinks industry.
Businesses of the selling variety are sweating with the weight. One example that we've previously raised is pub group JD Wetherspoon (JDW), which projected £20m of extra costs this year from business rates, electricity taxes, excise duty and the apprenticeship levy. But it isn't just the publicans that are sitting nervously. Inflation in fuel and food has already increased levels of financial distress, according to insolvency expert Begbies Traynor - and the NLW is set to rise.
This is all to say that the flavour of government policy to the corporate sector since the election of Tony Blair has been intervention, to a point. Prime Minister Theresa May's green paper on corporate governance lays out middle ground policies - toughened shareholder votes, employee representation on boards, bringing in private companies - that could have come from a Miliband government, just as energy price intervention would have done.
The exception to all of this is, perhaps, Jeremy Corbyn. In addition to higher corporation tax, Mr Corbyn's Labour party has proposed a cap on executive pay, in enforcing a pay ratio between the top and the average worker. Those companies providing services to government are an explicit target.
A wage cap of 20 times a company's average wage has the support of 57 per cent of the public, according to a ComRes poll - and 49 per cent of Conservative voters. The toughest option under consideration by Mrs May's government is to require that shareholders sign off pay exceeding a pre-determined limit, as set in the company's pay policy.
Political and shareholder pressure on excessive pay is already being felt at listed corporates. If this election proceeds as pollsters predict, we shouldn't expect much policy change. But it's worth remembering that the parameters of the middle ground are set in relation to today's more extreme ideas.
