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.Only those approvedwould be permitted to be traded.Anyone trying to circumvent therules by going offshore or onto the Internet would face the negativeenforcement mentioned above their contracts would be unen-forceable in law.Fifth, we would seek to offer the same protection for our remain-ing top-class industrial companies as is routine in France or theUnited States and perhaps go further.Ultimately, the aim must bean orderly downsizing of the financial sector, much as postwar Franceand Italy sought an orderly move of employment from agriculture toindustry.More of the engineers and technical experts from our bestuniversities would end up making things.Some of the famed rocketscientists who spend their days in the City cooking up ever more ab-stract financial entities may even end up making.rockets.Certainly, at a moment when the survival of human life of theplanet may depend on our finding new technologies to generateenergy and reduce our disruptive impact on natural systems, itseems perverse to the point of madness to corral our brightest andbest technicians on to open-plan trading floors in air-conditionedskyscrapers.Sixth, we suggest sharply increasing taxes on the hedge fund oper-ators and private equity partners, to ensure at the very least that theypay the same rate of tax as their cleaners.The loophole whereby in-come can be disguised as a capital gain and thus taxed at a lower ratewas closed by a previous Labour government in the mid-1960s, only,bizarrely, to be reopened by Labour more than three decades later.Itis time to close it again.Seventh, we suggest deregulating genuinely private businesses andthe self-employed (frequently the two are synonymous).One by-product of the Olympian myth that vast financial institutions are partof the enterprise culture has been the imposition on genuine enter-prises of the sort of employment and other legislation used to extractat least some payback from the New Olympians for the benefits of 268 the gods that failedlimited liability and other privileges.The self-employed and smallfirms ought to be regulated only with regard to their activities (e.g., ajam maker would have to obey the food and hygiene laws) and not asbusinesses.Indeed, by greatly enhancing the attractiveness of thepartnership or the small firm, such deregulation may divert many tal-ented people from the pursuit of Olympian status to gentler, more re-warding, and more socially useful business careers.None of this will be easy.Some of it may involve abrogatingBritain s signature to various international treaties, those enshriningNew Olympian objectives, not least the various European treaties.Nor does much of this New Populism appear to be immediately inprospect, despite the darkening clouds over the world economy.Andwhereas it could move rapidly onto the agenda should the crisisworsen markedly and suddenly, it is possible also that it will take timeto piece together a populist coalition.We have touched already on some of the elements that may joinsuch an alliance: small business people and farmers (if there are anyleft); independent middle-class professionals and shopkeepers.Thenthere are those filling the basic supervisory roles that ought to be thebackbone of society: railway station managers and their equivalents inbus depots and motorway service stations, police sergeants, prison of-ficers, main street store managers, noncommissioned officers in theforces and similar.We would seek to add two significant blocks ofmembers: manufacturing and export businesses and trade unionmembers.Industry and those working in it have been the biggestlosers from the Olympian experiment as productive capacity has beendestroyed and millions of manufacturing jobs wiped out.Those own-ing, running, and working in industry know better than anyone thevirulence with which New Olympianism has blighted the economy.Both union members and managers have much to gain from a moresensible attitude to industry.And those within such a coalition will always have the inestimableadvantage of the fact that, beneath the shiny packaging, theOlympians creed is and always has been the reverse of their own.Itis Unpopulism, the belief system that sacrifices jobs and productiveassets on the altar of deal making, that demands schools and post of- after the gold rush 269fices be rationalized (i.e
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