Why Cameron is right on "big business"

By Alex Singleton | 4 January 2006

As free-marketeers, we think that business has an important role in raising prosperity, fighting poverty, enriching the environment and improving human rights. In short, we believe in the profit motive as a way of delivering social ends. But it is important to distinguish between free-marketeers and corporatists - those who support government and business getting in to bed with each other.

Our free-market support of the profit motive is not a license for businesses to do whatever they want. We oppose corporate welfare. When businesses send lobbyists to Westminster, Brussels and Washington, governments should be very wary of them. As Adam Smith put it: "The proposal of any new law or regulation which comes from [business], ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention."

Some have criticised David Cameron for saying that "We should... stand up to big business when it's in the interests of Britain and the world.". Yet he has also called for a campaign for capitalism. From where we are standing, he's promoting a sound free-market (but anti-corporatist) position here.