No mandate. No worries.

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to have a free rein to do whatever you want, whenever you want, without any checks and balances.  In the corporate world, with the exception of maybe Elon Musk, this would never be the case as corporate governance, policies and procedures and answering to a Board of Directors would prevent this dictatorial level of control.  For obvious reasons, it presents too much risk.

In the political world, this doesn’t seem to matter.  Andy Burnham wasn’t even an MP before the World Cup started.  Only a couple of days after Spain lift the trophy, he is in now Prime Minister, sacked his equivalent of a Board and reshuffled his Cabinet (including ironically appointing Angela Rayner as Housing Minister), and announced a series of potential pledges that go beyond the Labour manifesto, the equivalent of breaching corporate policies.

In business, the importance of corporate governance has never been more acute.  A changing political and potentially legislative landscape means that boards of corporates and SMEs alike need to understand the environment in which they are working to ensure that they can meet these shifting demands.  With the appointment of the new PM there is likely to be another round of tax increases in the autumn budget, compounding record increases over the past two years, and the tax man is likely to be knocking on the front door of business, whether that’s harmonising CGT with income tax, increasing corporation tax or wider stealth taxes through NIC.

Company Boards will need to remain agile but also fastidious in their approach to cash management to mitigate potential tax increases, all within a framework of control, policy and procedure, a system that we could only dream that our political counterparts would have to comply with.