Politicised CMA to have another look at mobile ecosystemsPoliticised CMA to have another look at mobile ecosystems

According to reports from the FT and BBC, CMA Chair Marcus Bokkerink stepped down earlier this week as a direct result of government intervention. It seems the Labour government had decided the CMA wasn’t ‘pro-growth’ enough and challenged Bokkerink to show how he was going to change that. His presentation clearly didn’t hit the mark, so he’s been turfed out. Hilariously, the government’s search to replace this supposedly retrograde dinosaur led them to Doug Gurr, the head of the Natural History Museum.

“This Government has a clear plan for change - to boost growth for businesses and communities across the UK,” said Secretary of State for Business and Trade, Jonathan Reynolds, who seems to have been behind Bokkerink’s defenestration. “As we’ve set out, we want to see regulators including the CMA supercharging the economy with pro-business decisions that will drive prosperity and growth, putting more money in people’s pockets.”

“I am honoured to be asked to Chair the CMA at this crucial time,” said Gurr. “I look forward to working with the strong leadership team to help deliver business investment and economic growth in a framework of effective competition and consumer protection.” Thanks Doug, that’s great.

The competition regulator should, of course, be neither pro- nor anti-business, restricting itself to a case-by-case assessment of the effect a given piece of M&A will have on markets, especially with respect to competition. The clue is in the name. As the FT noted in a subsequent piece, political interference in the process of regulation is bad.

“Although in the short term it seems reassuring for business, if competition policy is at the mercy of political fashion it becomes less stable and predictable, which undermines business confidence,” an antitrust lawyer told the FT. “It is an extraordinary move by the government to interfere so much in a competition authority.”

Sadly it’s not so extraordinary. So long as the government can hire and fire the heads of regulators they are inherently politicised. And then you have the case of the UK communications regulator, Ofcom, which now spends much of its time censoring the digital domain at the government’s behest, thanks to the odious Online Safety Act.

No sooner had Gurr taken Bokkerink’s still-warm seat than the CMA announced it was going have another look into the mobile ecosystem duopoly run by Google and Apple. To be fair, Gurr does have some relevant experience to this sort of thing, having run Amazon in the UK before surrendering to his inner palaeontologist, so he will have rich experience in getting regulators to give Big Tech what it wants.

“More competitive mobile ecosystems could foster new innovations and new opportunities across a range of services that millions of people use, be they app stores, browsers or operating systems,” said Sarah Cardell who is, for the time being at least, Chief Exec of the CMA. “Better competition could also boost growth here in the UK, with businesses able to offer new and innovative types of products and services on Apple’s and Google’s platforms.”

‘The CMA will take a proportionate and transparent approach to this investigation and will now focus on engaging a wide range of stakeholders, including device manufacturers, software developers and user groups – as well as gathering evidence from Apple and Google before reaching a decision by the end of October 2025,’ concludes the press release, omitting to note that it will probably decide whatever the government tells it to.

This move was teased when the CMA canned its previous look into the matter last year while it waited for the government to give it more power, which clearly came with strings attached. It’s hard not to suspect this pro-business rhetoric may also have been influenced by the arrival of Trump and his Big Tech buddies in the White House. The US was annoyed by the CMA having the temerity to query Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision, so we’ll presumably be seeing less of that sort of thing from now on.