When economic times are hard, big companies take the opportunity to eat smaller ones. This process does not respect national boundaries, particularly when an economy is as open to outsiders as Britain's. This is an old story, so it's hard to see quite why the prospective takeover of Cadbury by Kraft, the American food conglomerate, has got people going quite as much as it has. Granted, jobs might go - but jobs always go. Granted, the new management might not be sympathetic to the workforce - it usually isn't. Granted, they're foreign - these days, that's the norm. British companies are taken over by foreign firms all the time. As Tony Blair once pointed out to the French president, the electricity in 10 Downing Street is supplied by a French company. So why the fuss?

LRB 7 January 2010 | PDF Download