Scottish Mortgage boss Anderson compares PM May to Hitler

The co-manager of the Edinburgh-based Scottish Mortgage Trust has launched a scathing attack on Prime Minster Theresa May in which he compares her to Hitler and Stalin.

Baillie Gifford fund manager James Anderson, made the comments in response to May’s speech at last week’s World Economic Forum in Davos where she said that a ‘cult of individualism’ was partly to blame for the alienation many people felt towards globalisation and free trade.

Mr Anderson, who is largely credited with helping build the £4.3 billion SMT into the country’s largest equity investment trust, which only narrowly missed promotion to the FTSE 100 last year, Citywire has reported that he told investors in London he was deeply worried about the tone of messages coming from world leaders such as May.

He said: “Mrs May’s incantations at Davos that we should get away from the cult of the individual sounded more like something to come out of the mouth of Stalin or Hitler than any democratic leader.”

May’s comments would appear to be an expanding on her previously expressed scepticism of internationalism having told last year’s Conservative Party conference that “if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere”.

Speaking at the Swiss resort last week, May told the assembled business leaders: “Too often today, the responsibilities we have to one another have been forgotten as the cult of individualism has taken hold, and globalisation and the democratisation of communications has encouraged people to look beyond their own communities and immediate networks in the name of joining a broader global community.”

The PM was speaking two days after she spelled out her intention for a ‘clean’ Brexit that would take the UK out of the European single market and prior to her announcement today of a new industrial strategy for the United Kingdom.

The UK Government said today that its vision for a modern Industrial Strategy is one that that builds on the UK’s strengths, closes the productivity and wealth gap between different regions and drives growth more evenly across the country.

In its Green Paper, Building our Industrial Strategy, the UK Government defines three fundamental challenges Britain must face up to now, and in the future:

- Build on the UK’s strengths and extend excellence into the future;

- Close the gap between Britain’s most productive companies, industries, places and people and the rest;

- Make Britain one of the most competitive places in the world to start or grow a business.

Speaking ahead of the unveiling of the new strategy, May told her audience in Davos that she was not against globalisation and the benefits it brought, such as mass travel and communication and the ability for British companies to export their goods to millions of consumers around the world.

However, she claimed that “we need to act to address the deeply felt sense of economic inequality that has emerged in recent years, so we also need to recognise the way in which a more global and individualistic world can sometimes loosen the ties that bind our society together, leaving some people feeling locked out and left behind.”

Mr Anderson branded the speech “depressing”.

He said May’s attitudes risk alienating ‘companies of interest’ such as internet and technology giants Amazon, Alibaba, Facebook and Illumina, the gene sequencing pioneer, in which Scottish Mortgage is heavily invested.

Such companies, which have made Scottish Mortgage one of the best performing global funds in the country with a ten-year total shareholder return of 288 per cent, required ambition, tolerance and a deep sense of individuality to succeed, he said.