A New Political Force?

[WBA123]

As a country, we aren’t quite the basket case you would imply and neither are several of our EU neighbors shining examples of economic excellence either. Despite several of the examples you give being entirely down to Brexit, how about a little bit of balance?

UK employment is at a record high of 32.6million. Falling unemployment, at four per cent, is the lowest since 1975. Wages up 3.4 per cent, their fastest since 2008 with inflation down to 1.8 per cent so despite all of this uncertainty over the mess aka Brexit (which there is) we are in a better place than many of our neighbors if you care to examine their respective records.

I recently spent a period at Dyson HQ on an assignment where this was a hot topic. At no point was Brexit ever considered a factor in jobs being lost at the HQ. The move to Singapore is primarily due to an increasing majority of Dyson’s customer base and the manufacturing operations that support this now being in Asia. This has been on the cards pre-Brexit. It’s all about cost of manufacture and the logistics to ship stock out from the UK. Why would you not manufacture in the region half way across the globe where you are seeing your highest growth in revenues?

Oh, and you also neglected to mention that Dyson moving forwards will still employ double the number of staff that it did 4 years ago and that they are well in to a £200 Million investment program to support the R&D and testing facility in Wiltshire. I wouldn’t say that was a company pulling out would you?

Regarding the Japanese car industry, Honda itself does not blame Brexit as a factor. They acknowledge that the plant has struggled for a long time and that the car industry is going through unprecedented times. Sales of diesel cars are not only in free-fall in the UK, where demand fell by almost 30%, but also on mainland Europe. The only plant in the EU outside of Japan where they manufacture is Swindon. They are not switching to another EU location due to Brexit. You neglected to mention that they are also closing a large plant in Turkey and I don’t believe Turkey are involved in Brexit.

The facts, though, are that Japan no longer needs to make cars in Europe because the EU trade deal it has finally signed will cut its export tariffs to zero meaning its cheaper to manufacture in Japan than in the EU - even more so now the Japanese government is offering large incentives to manufacturers to relocate manufacturing.

Nissan is a company in crisis which has just had its chairman arrested and is under investigation so lots going on there. The X-Trail is diesel powered and it has been suggested that Nissan was struggling to ensure the engines with which the new vehicle was to have been powered complied with the EU's new emissions regulations. It has also been suggested that, with diesel falling in demand, it would have been prohibitively expensive for Nissan to ship petrol engines from Japan to fuel the new line.

It simply means that the estimated 700 or so jobs that would have been created as a result of production of the X-Trail will now not be. It does not mean any of the existing 7,000 or so workers at Sunderland will lose their jobs. The company has no plans to remove production of the zero-emission Leaf, the world's best-selling electric vehicle either.

I’m not pretending that the uncertainty and dithering by useless politicians over Brexit hasn’t caused the jitters in many quarters and caused several businesses to up sticks because it has. It’s far from ideal but I just wish remainer's like yourself would retain a degree of balance. In between sneering at fellow posters for reading in to what you cite as biased reporting of facts, you might well add a bit more balance to your own arguments rather than seeking to blame everything on Brexit when it is clearly not the case.

Good post.

I'm not saying Nissan aren't building the X-trail or that Honda have pulled out purely because of Brexit. I'm saying that Brexit is a contributory factor towards that decision. Its nothing to do with balance when jobs are lost and Brexit has contributed towards that decision making process. Seems to me that Brexiteers bury their head in the sand and just seek to discredit every credible source or company.

It doesn't help when Boris Johnson says F%@k business. Many of the companies here are foreign owned, and we are putting trade barriers in place with the largest trading bloc in the world and our largest customer.

UK employment is at a record high because of the way they measure it. One hour part time jobs per week and zero hours contracts now count towards it.

Brexit has created a situation where we have no idea what will happen after March 29th. Business uncertainty and a lack of clarity from the government is causing major headaches across the country. This could be an absolute disaster and Brexit is the cause. I'm happy for reasoned debate, but have no idea why anyone would advocate a no deal Brexit. Its plain lunacy.

And I still can't work out one tangible benefit of why we are doing this.