As Noah notes, Britain has a new prime minister, Theresa May. She has reached 10 Downing Street by surviving a long time in a ministerial position (Home Secretary) infamous for burying the ambitions of many, and then by playing a cynical and ultimately canny game during the EU referendum and its chaotic aftermath. After Michael Gove managed, by his brutal betrayal of Boris Johnson, the party’s darling (to borrow a phrase), to sink both Johnson and himself, May was left to pick up the pieces as the only credible candidate to succeed David Cameron.

There will be plenty to say about May in due course, but it’s worth noting for now that she’s not Maggie 2.0, either in terms of politics or personality. A far better comparison is with Angela Merkel, interestingly another clergyman’s daughter. Both are somewhat dour, both are tough in-fighters good with the knife, and both occupy the center-ground.

That made it curiously appropriate that one of May’s earliest policy ideas since becoming certain of the top job was the suggestion that employee representatives should, by law, sit on company boards, a notion cribbed from the Germany of forty years ago. Leaving aside the contempt such an idea shows for private property and the affection it reveals for corporatism, there’s plenty to suggest that it doesn’t work too well either.

Here’s Ursula Weidenfeld, writing in the Financial Times:

At a reception in Berlin at the end of June Joachim Gauck, the president of Germany, along with ministers, trade unionists and the heads of employers associations, assembled to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Mitbestimmungsgesetz or “co-determination” act.
After the champagne toasts, the guests began to discuss the future of this system of joint decision-making between employers and employees in the age of globalisation. Optimism was in short supply. As politicians in other countries, including Theresa May, the incoming British prime minister, are thinking about expanding workers’ rights, Germany, it seems, is quietly bidding farewell to them.
The great and the good gathered in Berlin were celebrating a glorious past. Since the law was passed in 1976, half of the seats on the boards of companies with 2,000 or more employees must be occupied by labour representatives. In companies with fewer than 2,000 employees, the proportion is one-third. The Mitbestimmungsgesetz transformed workers into co-managers of their companies. Employees in Germany not only have a say when it comes to working conditions; they are also involved in executive appointments and decisions over job cuts or the introduction of new technology.
In the past 40 years, workers have helped to reduce production costs, and agreed to flexible working schemes and short-time work where necessary. Owners and shareholders, meanwhile, have often given job guarantees and have invested in areas where labour costs were high.
“Mitbestimmung [co-determination] is part of our identity,” said Ingo Kramer, president of the federation of German employers. But its best years are behind it. While it has contributed to industrial peace within companies, it has also hindered innovation and reduced profits….It is not only the employers who are downbeat about the future of co-determination. Young employees, too, are less than enthusiastic about worker representation. They prefer taking stock-options instart-ups to works councils and representation on the board…
As Mr Gauck acknowledged, in companies with strong worker representation there is a tendency to be reactive and to innovate only in a crisis. It is much harder for businesses to be innovative when times are good, which means that they do too little too late….

We don’t yet know why May suggested this idea. She might genuinely believe it, or maybe she just thinks it sends a useful political message at a time when (1) the referendum has revealed deep discontent among Britain’s ‘left behinds’ and (2) the Labour party has vacated the centre ground. That doesn’t change the fact that it is an old, bad idea. And the message it sends at a time when Britain will need to attract new investment, well…