Last week, you, me and every other taxpayer in Britain each handed £13 to the billionaire Richard Branson. Not that we were told about this national whip-round. Instead, George Osborne claimed the heavily discounted sale of Northern Rock to the Virgin boss and a few of his chums represented "value for money". That's a funny way to describe a deal where taxpayers come out at least £400m poorer, but at least we now have an answer to that perennial pre-Christmas question of what to give the man who has everything.
And what do Team Branson plan to do with the Rock? Listen to Virgin Money chairman David Clementi's talk of creating "a significant banking competitor" and you'd have come away with wholesome impressions of commitment and investment. If you'd leafed through the FT this weekend, though, you'd have read about how the Virgin consortium will raid the business of its own cash to pay for the purchase – and then, as the chief investor, American financier Wilbur Ross, puts it: "We would hope to sell out a few years down the road." In other words, the business plan is to buy it cheap, strip it of assets – then flog it dear.
Hang on, you're probably thinking. Is this the same Branson who had those record shops? Who always pops up in the papers dressed as a woman or riding in a hot air balloon? Sir Richard of the Beard and the Overbite?
And the answer is: yes. Sure, Branson would like you to believe that he's the greatest iconoclast since John Calvin, leading a Reformation of established business. And if you won't buy that, he'll settle for being cast as a public-school Don Quixote for ever tilting at insiders and interest groups. Yes, the entrepreneur screws up – as with cars, cola, cosmetics and all those other discarded Virgins – but he takes risks.
The more prosaic truth is that the Virgin boss keeps himself in homes in Holland Park and Necker Island by taking taxpayer subsidies and operating heavily protected businesses. After all, you don't get much safer than a small mortgage lender that's had all its rubbish assets taken off it by the Treasury, in a market where the big banks are keeping their eyes down and their fingers crossed.
Think about the great Branson triumphs and you'll see what I mean. Virgin Rail? A monopoly on the West Coast main line, complete with initial subsidies worth hundreds of millions. Virgin Radio and Virgin Mobile? Both granted government licences to operate in a heavily restricted market. Virgin Airlines? The beneficiary of regulators' decision to strip British Airways of landing slots between London and New York and award them to the number two player. Again, a closed market where Branson has tried to keep the door shut tight against further competition.
Despite all the awards and the cosy relationships with whoever's in Downing Street, the Virgin boss neither makes anything, nor changes anything. He's no radical. The Northern Rock purchase is typical of his style: he fronts up a deal where the real money tends to come from someone else (in this case, an American and an Abu Dhabi investment firm), slaps the Virgin name everywhere and then cashes out as soon as possible. Branson isn't an entrepreneur; he's a carpetbagger.
Early in Tom Bower's splendid biography of Branson, there is a scene in which he is giving a Millennium Lecture at Oxford University in November 1999. The "lighthouse for enterprise" is asked what his great hope is for the new century, and a hush falls over the audience. What might he say? Were this Bill Gates, a picture would be painted of a software revolution. The head of Nissan might summon up a vision of Africans and Asians gaily pootling about in cheap new hatchbacks. What does the bearded visionary have in mind? "To run the national lottery."
Of course he does: a government-gifted licence to get his brand name plastered everywhere – the sort of thing Branson is always after.
But here's the thing: in his desire for sheltered money-makers, the Virgin boss differs from the rest of British business only in his desire for publicity. Look at our household names: take out retail, banks and commodities and the things you're left with bear names such as Wessex Water or Centrica or Arriva. In other words, they do things the public sector used to do – pump water or pipe gas or lay on public transport. Alternatively, they're outfits such as Serco, or Capita and they're bidding for contracts from the government; or they're engineers bidding for PFI projects. Now look at the big names in America or Germany: there are firms such as Google or Siemens.
Over here much of the private sector isn't adding anything or innovating – indeed, it's tricky to do that when you're running an administrative office or supplying water. They're simply taking contracts and cutting staffing costs.
This is a picture of lazy British business, either seeking business from the state or the protection of sheltered industries. And yet if you listen to the Conservatives, the problem with the economy is that the labour markets are too heavily regulated. No 10 lets it be known that it's taking seriously ideas to scrap laws around unfair dismissal, so that employees can be sacked without explanation.
The implication of all this is that Cameron and Osborne think the workers are to blame for the malaise of the British economy. Look at the Northern Rock deal, however, or flick through the business pages, and the opposite appears to be the case: it's business that needs to be prodded into working harder.