The market can’t deliver growth alone

The US, our European cousins, the BRICs – they certainly don’t practise it" -- getting government off our backs, that is. Look where it has got those countries. So, that disposes of Heseltine's argument. As for his suggestion of a  " National Growth Council chaired by the Prime Minister", it would be laughable if it were not so crass. The country is already suffering from the fact that neither Cameron nor Osborne, and certainly not Cable, has a vestige of an idea of how business works, and how economies can grow. How does his plan differ from those failed national plans of Wilson and (George) Brown all those years ago, of incomes policies and nationalisation? As for " inviting local business partnerships to bid for significant funding from central government on a competitive basis every five years to build local economic growth": what's that all about? When did central government ever have a clue in this area? We've tried the corporate state, the "partnership" of CBI, TUC and government in the past, mercifully swept away by the Thatcher government of which Heseltine was once an enthusiastic member -- until he went native and fell in love with the EU, "our European cousins". Heseltine has the nerve to cite Joseph Chamberlain in the context of his plan. Cameron and Osborne would do better to follow his example than listen to the advice of has-been Heseltine, as the DT says, " a former deputy prime minister ". His advice is about as useful as any that might have come from the current deputy PM, or indeed from his predecessor, John Prescott. No, my Lord, it is not more government that is needed, it is less.

I'm surprised that anybody should pay any attention to tired old Tarzan.  He was a total failure in government, and was responsible for wasting millions on daft government schemes that served no purpose but to keep an army of bureaucrats employed.

Can't you just imagine the national Growth Council he proposes.  It will be stuffed to the gunnnals with has-been politicos like Heseltine, and establishment business men like that other serial failure, Adair Turner.

They will then employ a core bureaucracy that will set about making the rules under which taxpayer's money can be handed over to their chosen few, and that core will then hire more officials to implement their rules.  The result will be precisely nothing at great expense - as has been just about all other government initiatives on picking winners since 1945.

The government fails at what it should be doing: ensuring good education, building a first class infrastructure, creating a simple, fair and low tax base etc.=, and anybody who thinks that more government is the answer is just plain daft

Forget Tarzan.

The same gut who completely mismanaged HSBC for 10 years all the way to bankruptcy, (and needed a £3 billion, bail out from AIG,) and laundered at least £9 billion lion in drug money alone and which has now been implicated in LIBOR fixing as well, is now Minister for Trade and Investment.

Now that's what I call a real entrepreneur.

Unfortunately so does David Cameron, which says it all really.

Another bunch of unmitigated rubbish. Ordinary people create wealth almost exclusively outside of government. Government should simply provide the framework in which they can operate (the problem is it doesn't just do that and when it does, it does it pretty badly).

The most dynamic economies in the world have low taxation, low government regulation and low government spending. The most sclerotic economies have the opposite.

If government spending, regulation and interference is a recipe for success then why isn't the EU the most prosperous and dynamic economic area in the world ? Answers on a postcard Mr.H please.

ps: I would love to ask James Dyson, Richard Branson, Alan Sugar, Charles Dunstone, Anita Roddick, Martin Sorrell, Harvey Goldsmith etc etc etc. how much input a Local Business Partnership or their nearest Chamber of Commerce had on building their success. My guess would be absolutely bugger all.