But if things deteriorate in the way that they did during the last Labour government, trudging through the downturn will be a much more disagreeable journey than it need be And all of us will suffer.. With Tory governments you knew you were on your own, but with a Labour one you sort of expect politicians to involve themselves.This clashes with the new independence, the spirit that proclaims that the success of business people is due to their own efforts and nothing else.So business people find themselves defending vast salary increases on the grounds that they have earned the dosh through their brilliant management – and almost in the same breath they squeal to government that its polices are ruining their business.It is ridiculous – just as the attacks on the new business ministers are ridiculous – but it is there. As times get harder we will need a thoughtful and measured working relationship between government and business. My worry is that, as the general business climate deteriorates, a relationship which is a bit strained will become truly corrosive.That climate will get worse; I don’t think there is much doubt about that Things may not be dreadful, but they will be tougher. Other aspects of this involvement are more general: to frame fiscal and monetary policy to “help” industry. This attitude is a hangover from the old days of industrial policy, picking winners, corporatist Britain.

Cuddle your business cronies, bash the rest.From the side of business, though, there is another and rather different dual standard, which in a way I think is even more corrosive. It bursts out in Gordon Brown’s periodic attacks on executive salaries; it burst out in that attack on British management; it burst out in attacks on the lottery; it bursts out in attacks on the City, including the ferocious attack on pension misselling – which, while few would defend it, was not any evil plot but was the direct result of ill-constructed policies by the government of the day.Ask this question: could one conceive of an American Treasury Secretary attacking the salaries of top US business people? The idea is ludicrous, particularly so since the present incumbent is ex-Goldman Sachs. On the one hand there still lingers a feeling that part of the job of government is to be closely involved in the business community. Some of this involvement is specific: it is its job to organise incentives to invest. Why the flak? Or rather, since anything a government does is quite properly scrutinised by its opponents, why do the attacks seem credible?I think the answer lies in Labour’s less-than-complete conversion to US Democrat thinking.

Yet somehow Gordon Brown feels it is within the acceptable role of his office to do so.What therefore makes the attacks credible is not their fundamental merit but the dual standard on which the Government seems to be operating. Instinctively, business is still the enemy, and this instinct keeps bursting out. I suppose that being a peer still carries some kudos, but the thing that astounds me is that these people are prepared to put with the flak that comes at them for what is really remarkably little reward – in the case of Gus Macdonald, no financial reward at all.So what Labour is doing would be completely normal in the US and not at all unusual in the UK. The US has Robert Rubin, the former head of Goldman Sachs as its Treasury Secretary; Mrs T had Lord Young in the Cabinet. All Mr Blair has done is appoint some pretty prominent business people as junior ministers.