“No-deal Brexit will not change anything.” It turns out when James Dyson said that last week, he was doing an impression of one of his aggressive hand-dryers – ie, loudly producing an unnecessary amount of hot air. Because this week, after years of campaigning to free the country from the shackles of the EU, Dyson announced that his new electric car would be built not in the sunlit uplands of post-Brexit Britain but Singapore. Dyson was quick to say that Brexit had absolutely nothing to do with the decision, instead claiming that Singapore was close to key markets and regional supply chains – unlike Britain, which is just about to slice off its access to key markets and regional supply chains due to that thing which has absolutely nothing to do with this decision.
Now, to be fair to Dyson – and that can be hard to do, given that he looks like an older, unironed version of Julian Assange – you could argue that this doesn’t represent a change from Dyson’s usual business practice. It tends to develop its vacuums and dryers in the UK and then manufacture them in Asia – which does mean that Dyson probably shouldn’t be claiming to speak for the thousands of British businesses that are hoping to manufacture in the UK after Brexit. It means that Dyson’s proclamation that a no-deal Brexit would change nothing might be true for him, but as a forecast for other businesses in the country it’s a bit like his products: it both sucks and blows.
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