Ethics drought threatens UK‘s economic future, warns Portillo

By Rupert Stein

Britain's uncertain economic future has blamed on the lack of ethics among its business leaders. The criticism was articulated at last week’s 20th Anniversary Dinner & Business Panel JABE (Iewish Association for Business Ethics) in Central London.

Guest speaker Michael Portillo said that capitalism is in crisis because of a lack of ethics. The former Cabinet Minister and broadcaster declared that “if there is no trust, everything collapses, business and capitalism simply cannot run without”.

Turning to last summer’s riots, Mr Portillo said that the country came close to anarchy. “If there were a few million people on the streets instead of a few thousand, there would have been anarchy. But you can also argue that the rioters were only mirroring the same moral principles that our politicians and business leaders use. This is why ethics is important,” he said.

“In Business there is a tendency to hang your ethics at the door. An individual’s sense of ethics gets subsumed into the business. Many people start with good moral instincts but they get lost over time.”

Mr Portillo praised the work of JABE in combating the lack of morals that led to the riots and the crisis in capitalism. “JABE is all about teaching ethics to young people in the schools and to businesspeople in the boardroom. But in order to succeed it needs to be part of a larger cultural change. JABE is leading the way, but we’re only at the start.

“These standards have been lost within the Jewish community, and the Jewish community can set the example for the rest of the country,” he said.

Following the Dinner, Mr Portillo was joined at a panel discussion with Dayan Yitzchok Berger, Dayan of the Manchester Beis Din and David Tyler, Chairman of J Sainsbury plc; Jeremy Isaacs, founder of the JRJ Group. They were interviewed by former BBC presenter Nick Cosgrove. All the panellists agreed that the UK was facing tougher times and an uncertain economic future, and that a lack of ethics among today’s business and political leaders played a large part of that.