The BBC, the Tories and the Sugar solution
This blog was first to highlight the conflict of Sir Alan Sugar presenting The Apprentice while advising the government. With BBC director-general Mark Thompson taking to his own airwaves to defend the indefensible, let me now offer a way out off the problem.
Whether Sugar will be effective as a champion of entrepreneurship is another matter. He has undoubtedly been successful in business, turning a one-man band into a FTSE 100 company at one point. He spotted gaps in the consumer market and exploited them, showing an admirable disdain for red-tape.
Perhaps his most creative days are over - and his subscription to the niceties of corporate governance and shareholder relations left much to be desired – but that does not mean he has no wisdom to impart to others. Even re-inventing himself as a television personality shows enterprise.
But being a good example is not the same as being a champion. Sugar needs to find a way to communicate practical help to would-be entrepreneurs if he is to succeed. Otherwise Gordon Brown will be accused of recruiting him simply as a publicity stunt and Sugar will be accused of falling for it.
Whether he performs the role well or badly, however, it is political. It is the prime minister’s appointment, it requires Sugar to advise the government, it puts him in the House of Lords where he will be expected to vote with Labour peers. It is as political as Lord Digby Jones’s short-lived position as trade minister in the Lords.
So the Tories are not simply making political mischief when they say he cannot also continue to present The Apprentice on television. And Thompson is tying himself in political knots when he argues that Sugar, though a business minister on a business programme, will not be commenting on business policy.
And as this blog pointed out when Sugar was elevated to the job, the next series of his programme is scheduled to appear in the weeks when the general election is likely to be held.
So the solution is so obvious that surely even Thompson and the Tories have thought of it but aren’t saying it. Make the television series later this year, as usual. But show it only after the election, which has to be before June 2010.
The Apprentice would normally run from March until June: next year start it as soon as the public finishes voting – which will mean June, and a three-months delay, at the latest. By then it is likely Sugar will have been told he is fired as a government adviser - though he will keep his peerage as a memento.
