Commentators like me often lament the lack of business experience among leading politicians – but also observe how few business leaders ever make successful transitions into the political arena. Archie Norman tried his hand as an opposition front-bencher, didn’t like it, and returned to the boardroom, latterly to lead the revival of Marks & Spencer; Digby Jones moved on from the CBI to serve uncomfortably as a trade minister under Gordon Brown. But there’s one obvious exception to the rule that politics and corporate life require totally different skill sets: Andy Street, who is campaigning for a third term as Tory mayor of the West Midlands, the UK’s second-most populous city-region after London.

We’re so used to seeing Street championing his territory and outplaying Westminster and local opponents that his previous 31-year career with the John Lewis Partnership has been largely forgotten. But his tenure there as managing director from 2007 until his resignation to fight the 2017 mayoral election is remembered as an era of golden and relatively stable growth for the employee-owned retailer, which has been rocky ever since.

Having snatched unexpected victory over Labour by the slimmest of margins in his first poll, Street returned with a handsome majority in 2021 and has built a record of achievement that’s notably businesslike – in attracting inward private-sector investment as well as billions from central government, in achieving affordable housing targets, in local transport projects, and even in trying to negotiate a version of the botched HS2 project that will finally take it northwards from Birmingham to Manchester.

And all this at no extra cost to residents, since there’s no mayoral levy, while Birmingham’s bankrupt Labour-led city council imposes a 21 per cent emergency council-tax hike. Street himself is credited with operating largely above tribal politicking and – according to my saloon-bar source in those parts – ‘many local lefties last time round sneaked down to the polling stations and voted for him’. This time they have the choice of a Labour candidate whose biggest idea, straight back to the 1970s, is to nationalise the buses.

For the West Midlands’ sake – and for the defence of the idea that some elected officials actually do more good than harm – I hope voters of all stripes stick with the incumbent mayor on 2 May. If Rishi Sunak and his predecessors have done so much damage that even Andy Street can’t hold on, their party really has reached a bitter end.

Ground rent rip-off

I’m sorry to hear that Michael Gove’s proposed reform, or even abolition, of the archaic leasehold property system in England may be about to fall by the wayside. The conversion of all leaseholds to freeholds at the stroke of Gove’s pen was perhaps too much to hope for, and would have needed new co-ownership solutions for flats. But his intention to restrict all ground rents to ‘peppercorn’ levels was a good one and would have done away with the developers’ scam of upward-ratcheting ground rent clauses that are so punitive to leasehold owners.

The suggestion from lobbyists on the other side of this equation is that relief for leaseholders might be outmatched by pain for pension-holders – who would suffer if Gove’s proposals had the effect of diminishing the value of freeholds owned by large pension funds. Seriously? Is that really a thing – or are there perhaps some large-scale freehold property investors out there who also happen to be potential Tory campaign donors?

I think we should be told – but as the sands of destiny race through the egg-timer of electoral oblivion, as it were, it may well be too late anyway.

Boeing gone?

This column is written in the Dordogne, where I’ve just arrived and haven’t had time to find a restaurant to tip: I’ll focus on finding one for next week. I flew with Ryanair – yes, guess what: cheap, full and on time – in one of its 600 identical Boeing 737s, about which no regular passenger I know has qualms. But here’s news that Boeing’s chief executive, chairman and commercial president are all on the way out in the aftermath of safety criticisms, most recently over the Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 whose door blew out in mid-air thanks to missing bolts. I hope the whole company isn’t heading for collapse, if only because I’d hate to see my favourite airline having to buy a whole new fleet from Airbus.

Spoons boom

I’ll buy a pint for the Sun sub-editor who came up with ‘Boozing boom £1bn for Spoons’ as an encapsulation of JD Wetherspoons’ interim report for the six months to 31 January. The vital statistic was an 8.2 per cent year-on-year increase in total sales to £991 million across the company’s 814 pubs, with profits before tax up from £4.6 million to £36 million. That’s a tribute to the robustness of the business built by founder Sir Tim Martin – but also confirmation of the case I made a fortnight ago that hospitality chains with scale can still do well in current conditions of patchy consumer spending, while cost-crippled independents struggle.

But even ‘Spoons’ (which collected £193 million of VAT in the six-month period) is at the mercy of a tax and business-rate regime that has fuelled a huge long-term shift of revenues from pubs to supermarkets, whose food profits and low overheads allow them to slash booze prices. Mind you, Sir Tim knows how to go low too: online answers to the question ‘What’s the cheapest way to get drunk at Spoons?’ suggest cocktail pitchers or cut-price cider for maximum buzz per pound. Or join a Facebook group that lets you post your location and sob story (‘My wife’s run off with the plumber’) and wait for fellow customers to send drinks to your table.

Come to think of it, that last trick might even work at the Garrick Club these days. You could try posting ‘My wife says she’ll leave me if I don’t resign: pass the port.’