It might be tempting, if you are sitting in Downing Street, to dismiss the current pre-budget howls from big business beasts as standard stuff from usual suspects.
Archie Norman, the Marks & Spencer chair who told the Telegraph the government’s workers’ rights proposals were “a political indulgence that the country cannot afford”, is a former Tory MP. Stuart Rose, who told the Times that he believed “we’re genuinely at the edge of a crisis”, is a Tory peer.
