Nick Clegg's speech on employee ownership

When I joined the Liberal Party, encouraging employee-owned enterprises was one of its key policies.

In the Alliance years that weakened to the argument that people would work harder if they had a share in the company who employed.

And today it has been grotesquely deformed into George Osborne's pet idea that people should be given shares in return for giving up their employment rights.

So it was good to see Nick Clegg making a speech - the Robert Oakeshott Memorial Lecture - on the subject last month:

Employee ownership helps to create a stronger economy because it structures businesses to do things differently. A diversity of business models in an economy is important because it ensures that not all firms are structured to take short sighted, gung-ho risks on behalf of others. 

But crucially, employee ownership can drive employee engagement by aligning the incentives of ordinary workers and the business. Robert Oakeshott thought that the key to the success of employee owned firms was the increased staff engagement of workers who own a share in equity.

All very sensible, even if we are not quite back to the vision of labour hiring capital yet.

Lord Bonkers adds: I once gave the Isabel Oakeshott Memorial Lecture and ended up in gaol.