A soirée with Sugar at the Oxford Union

Below is an article I initially wrote back in Trinity Term 2022, about Alan Sugar's fifth visit to the Oxford Union debating chamber. Although passed on to the Opinions team as it didn't quite fit into the News section, this remained unpublished by the student newspapers - until now!

Within the claret-coloured walls of the debate chamber, the audience for tonight’s guest was  abuzz with chatter and conversation. People try to get a glimpse of whoever is hovering just outside the door. There can be no denying that there’s palpable excitement about tonight’s event: an audience with Lord Alan Sugar, Kt. 

For those of you who aren't as obsessed with The Apprentice like the rest of us, allow me to give a little introduction. Many know him as the host of the U.K. edition of The Apprentice, in Donald Trump’s equivalent character. Before that, he is first and foremost a business magnate, politician, and author; selling his first company, Amstrad, for £125 million. This is combined, overall, to give him an estimated value of £1.21 billion. With a net worth like that, he should be able to afford his gas and electricity bills for another six months or so.

Watching him enter the Union, Lord Sugar displays a casual swagger; hands in pockets, getting a measure of the crowd around him, he instantly appears to be at ease with his audience. There are introductory remarks from host Michael-Akolade Ayodeji, but none from him; in a truly business-like manner, he gets straight down to it. The Q&A starts off on a rather humorous note, with Ayodeji quipping “Why was I not picked for the Junior Apprentice all those years ago?” 

The talk soon becomes more serious, with questions surrounding what it takes to make it in the world of business. When discussing the sorts of qualities he looks for in a good business partner, Sugar is noticeably vague; suggesting that it isn't necessarily a “matter of going into Boots, buying a bottle of ‘entrepreneurial formula’, and proceeding to liberally shower in it.” Rather, the qualities needed are innate, a natural instinct, ones that are encoded into the DNA of an individual. For a man who says he’s been asked the question “at least twenty thousand times”, he doesn’t seem to provide the audience with a wholly relevant answer. I found myself musing, as I typed up my notes for this article: how are we, as potential budding entrepreneurs, supposed to know if we have what ‘it’ takes when we’re not even sure what the ‘it’ is?

On the subject of whether wealthier individuals should help people during turbulent times, he shut down the question abruptly: “I don’t know about anyone else, but I certainly didn’t get any richer during the pandemic…. You cannot hold back businesses and entrepreneurs—they are the backbone of this country’s economy. They are the ones that pay their taxes and support the National Health Service, schools, and universities.” This is coming from a man who gave himself a £390 million dividend earlier this year, in one of the largest payouts to a company boss in recent years.

Instead, he claims, the burden should fall to larger companies in the form of a windfall tax, stating: “I think that specific industries, for example, should be audited by the government; and one of these should be oil and gas. British Petroleum, Shell, and people like that - all of them should have mandatory audits from the government as they are exploiting people. The government needs to come in, and restrict them putting the prices up.” Nods of approval ripple through the audience here; it appears as though he struck a shared sentiment. 

He continues on: “It’s no good sticking up the duty on petrol, because all that does is punish you - it doesn't punish them. Even if they do decrease the duty on petrol, the likes of you won’t see the benefit of it as it’ll be eaten off paying up debts somewhere else in the government purse.”

One of the primary topics that the audience circled back to, however, is Sugar’s dislike of the concept of working from home; something workers were encouraged to do at the beginning of the pandemic. Sugar is a strong advocate against it, calling it something “that sickens him.” He admits to the audience, candidly, that he does recognise there are good reasons to work from home, as long as people are working from home “diligently.” What he apparently recognises with the workforce currently is that many “don’t have genuine reasons” for not returning now, citing an overall "laziness" and apathy in the workforce. “You will learn nothing, I mean nothing, about working that way,” he says to the audience, “What did your mum and dad do? Did they work from home? No.”

As someone who’s parents careers’ consisted of working in other people’s gardens and handling the contents of very large ships when they came into dock, I laughed at this. Neither of them had the options to do this. Working from home is a privilege that isn't allowed with some jobs, and I understand that it can be a negative for the concept in this regard. Despite this, I still think of it as an inherently good thing; no more commuting, on public transport or car, a marked increase in productivity, the ability to have flexibility in your work/life balance, and an easing of childcare situations. For a man who actively confessed to leaving and returning home at times where he didn't get to see his children growing up - “leaving at 7 in the morning, returning after they’d gone to bed” - I can’t help but feel as though he misses the point rather. For a brief second, I almost felt sorry for him; I snap out, remembering the sort of person I’m listening to here. One of the old school: that sort of thing would be left to the wife! Of course! 

His main issue comes from the government’s attitudes to its own workers. He continues: “The biggest problem I have is with the civil servants themselves, who are exploiting this method ever since working from home with Covid became necessary. We are well past that now - yet they are still working from home, so you can’t get passports now unless you’re willing to wait for goodness knows how long. You can't renew your driving licence because you can't get the DVLA to work. The thing that makes me laugh the most is that even HMRC, the people that collect the taxes, even they are slow at the moment. That bit, especially, isn't such a bad thing if you ask me…” The audience chuckles again at this, but perhaps with a little more unease than previous laughs.

He does, however, end with a few rather charming answers about his mentors and the best bits of advice he’s received. Having grown up in a council house in Hackney, Sugar said that he looked up to his uncle the most as a child, who ran a shop in Victoria. After taking time to consider the question, Sugar replies that the best advice he had been given was from his two headmasters, Mr Kershaw and Mr Harris. The former, Sugar’s primary school headmaster, encouraged the young schoolboy to talk to the Mayor of Hackney during an open day, which he vividly remembers. On the other hand, Mr Harris, Sugar’s Senior School headmaster, pulled him aside one day and told him that he was on the wrong track; encouraging him to switch to the economics curriculum rather than continuing with science and engineering. Sugar remarks that both clearly saw something in the younger him that he had not yet recognised, and that both men helped him become the man he is today. 

So there you have it. No frills, no extras; just brutal, candid, unfiltered honesty. Lord Sugar is, without a doubt, a man who isn’t afraid of expressing his thoughts on a wide array of topics and political matters, very much living up to his on-screen persona. I, for one, end the evening not quite sure what I’ve learnt from listening to Lord Sugar, but profoundly relieved that nobody brought up his rather colourful relationship with Piers Morgan…