Not for the first time, the veteran commentator Ray Snoddy came up with a deft turn of phrase.
Mr Snoddy, the doyen of Fleet Street media writers during a near-35 year career on The Times and the Financial Times, told his followers on X last night: “Former Post Office chairman Henry Staunton would never win a prize as a stand-up comic but I know him to be a fastidiously honest man and when faced with the claims of a Tory minister – no contest.”
He was referring to the extraordinary war of words that has blown up between Mr Staunton and Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, who fired him last month.
Mr Staunton exacted revenge at the weekend when, in an incendiary interview with Oliver Shah of The Sunday Times, he said he was officially advised to delay compensation payments to sub-postmasters wrongly convicted in the Horizon scandal that has engulfed the Post Office.
A clearly furious Ms Badenoch responded on X on Sunday by claiming the interview was “full of lies” and consisting of “made-up anecdotes and a series of falsehoods” – scarcely the most diplomatic language to use about a former public employee.
Mr Staunton responded on Monday by saying that he “didn’t see any real movement until after the Mister Bates programme [the ITV drama about the Horizon scandal that aired in January]” and added: “I think it is pretty obvious to everyone what was really going on.”
That provoked another furious response from Ms Badenoch in the Commons on Monday in which she told MPs there was “no evidence whatsoever” of the process having been dragged out.
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The political made personal
She said it was a “disgrace” for Mr Staunton to suggest it had been and, for good measure, claimed he had been subject to a formal investigation over bullying allegations.
There seems little doubt that Ms Badenoch has chosen to make this personal.
Earlier on Monday, the media – including Sky News – had been led to believe that Kevin Hollinrake, the business minister whose responsibilities include postal services, was due to update MPs on the process of compensating wronged postmasters.
Mr Hollinrake, who is generally regarded as having made a good fist of trying to do right by the postmasters, was notably more diplomatic than Ms Badenoch when discussing Mr Staunton’s interview earlier in the day.
So, as Mr Snoddy has indicated, it comes down to who one believes – Ms Badenoch or Mr Staunton.
A City veteran with an impeccable boardroom record
Mr Snoddy, like this writer, first came across Mr Staunton when he was finance director of Granada – the FTSE-100 conglomerate which then ran one of the biggest regional franchises on ITV, a high street TV rentals business, a chain of motorway services and catering and laundry operations.
He had joined Granada – famously the maker of TV hits like Cracker, Prime Suspect and Coronation Street – in 1992 after a distinguished 20-year career at the audit firm Price Waterhouse (now part of PwC), where he had been a partner, having joined straight from the University of Exeter.
Mr Staunton, who ironically had grown up in a household that did not even own a television, soon turned out to be a City star as part of a three-man team – all accountants – that transformed Granada’s fortunes. They were led by the late Gerry Robinson, Granada’s chief executive, who first hired Charles (now Lord) Allen as head of Granada TV and then Mr Staunton as finance director.
The trio embarked on a series of buccaneering acquisitions, firstly buying Sutcliffe Catering from P&O Ferries in 1993 and then launching a bid for fellow ITV franchise holder London Weekend Television in 1994.
They followed this in late 1995 with a hostile bid for the hotels to Little Chef combine, Forte, in what turned out to be one of the City’s most-memorable takeover battles. They took Granada’s profits from £56.9m in 1991-92 to £735m in 1997-98.
While Messrs Robinson and Allen won most of the plaudits for their ‘front of house’ role and driving the operational improvements in the businesses they inherited or acquired, in the background was Mr Staunton, assiduously making the numbers add up and maintaining good relations with Granada’s lending banks.
Not least among his achievements was, with two years of the £3.9bn takeover of Forte, repaying the entire £2.5bn debt facility put in place to fund the deal.
A successful ‘portfolio career’
In 2000, some investors having pressed for the move for years, Granada announced plans to separate its catering and media operations.
A merger with Compass (where Mr Robinson had originally worked) was executed to form what is now the world’s biggest contract catering company while, in 2001, Granada Media merged with Carlton Communications to form what is now ITV plc.
Other parts of the business, such as the Cafe Ritazza and Upper Crest chains, now live on inside the catering group SSP while the motorway services businesses are now owned by the privately-owned Moto.
Mr Robinson stepped down in 2002, leaving Mr Allen and Mr Staunton as respectively chief executive and finance director of ITV, but it came as a considerable shock when, in September 2005, Mr Allen broke up the partnership.
Mr Staunton used this as an opportunity to build a successful ‘portfolio career’, taking on a clutch of non-executive directorships at FTSE-350 companies including Legal & General, Ladbrokes, Ashtead Group, Merchants Trust and Emap.
He later spent a distinguished 12 years on the board of WH Smith, nine of them as chairman, during which time the retailer’s fortunes were spectacularly revived by series of talented chief executives.
WH Smith’s close relationship with the Post Office made Mr Staunton a natural candidate when, in September 2022, the government was seeking to appoint a new Post Office chairman as it finally appeared to be coming to terms with the Horizon scandal.
‘Notable expertise and experience’
Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary at the time, said: “Henry Staunton brings notable expertise and experience to the Post Office and I am extremely pleased he is taking up the position.”
It looked an astute appointment – until Ms Badenoch decided to fire him, claiming his chairmanship was not proving effective.
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She told Sky’s Trevor Phillips at the time: “It was very sad that we had to come to this conclusion… and one of the things that I think is important when we do need to have a change of personnel is that we don’t hound the people or go after them.”
Ironically, she has ended up doing just that.
It may be she felt obliged to do so after Mr Staunton’s extraordinary interview with The Sunday Times.
Mr Staunton, who enjoys an impeccable boardroom record, has – as Mr Snoddy noted – always been a deeply understated, thoughtful man.
But there is no doubt he will have been wounded by Ms Badenoch’s decision to fire him and her subsequent remarks.
As one City adviser – who has known him for more than 25 years – puts it: “Henry is very accomplished, thoughtful and measured in the boardroom. He’s good to have around in a crisis, too.
“But he could be quite prickly at times too – which might explain his full-on counterattack.”
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The question now is whether Mr Staunton will respond to these latest attacks with further details on what he knows.
