Sir Alan – oops, Lord – Sugar, is rapidly becoming a godsend to bloggers across Britain.
He is in the papers again today, having accused women of being more likely than men to discriminate against other women on grounds of gender. He has also suggested that he would be unlikely to employ a pregnant woman (“Why would anyone give anybody a job knowing … unless it was a temporary job?”), although he later went on to say that “he could imagine why he might want to give a full-time job to a woman expecting a baby”.
Even more interestingly, Lord Sugar has hinted that he might step down as the Prime Minister’s “enterprise champion”:
“Too much negative stuff is really unhelpful. I may decide that this is simply not worth it, when you are giving your time free of charge for no agenda,” he said.
“No agenda”? So Sir Alan hasn’t got a job description then?
Not surprising, really, I suppose. His appointment was made in the frenetic couple of days in June after the Euro election trouncing and James Purnell’s resignation, when it appeared that Gordon’s days at Downing Street were numbered.
Sugar was appointed to give the impression that the PM had absolutely not run out of ideas, but, on the contrary, was positively fizzing with them. Putting the irascible star of The Apprentice in charge of looking after the interests of business seemed a good, eye-catching, idea at the time.
Unfortunately, however, Gordon hadn’t a clue what he wanted Lord Sugar to do and Sugar himself is looking increasingly unhappy in the role.
If Sugar does decide to walk, I won’t blame him. He is famous for firing potential apprentices; perhaps now is the time for him to fire his boss.
If he does go, will he revert to being just plain old Sir Alan???
Was the appointment of Alan Sugar made for the same reason as Jack Straw’s recent comments about knife crime, to catch the headlines and give the appearance of decisive action rather than do any thing positive, and effective? This is the mark of government. Smoke and mirrors.