The business case for Brexit rings out loud and clear
HOW many times have you read some grim prophecy about Brexit, suffixed by the words “business leaders say”. According to the Remain camp, the world of commerce is unanimous in its opposition to Britain leaving the EU.
Over the weekend, however, came a reminder that actually the business world is far from united on Brexit. Sir James Dyson, founder of one of the most successful manufacturing businesses to have come out of Britain in the past 30 years, called on the Government to reject the EU’s demands for money and to walk away from EU trade negotiations.
Then Tim Martin, founder of pub chain JD Wetherspoon, made the case for trading on World Trade Organisation rules – contradicting the Remain lobby by arguing that pulling out of the single market will lead to a fall in food prices.
He should know – his business lives or dies on food and drink being affordable for his customers. He would hardly back Brexit if he really thought he was throwing his company to the dogs. He can see what many Remainers choose to blind themselves to – that the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy and its protectionist attitude to food and drink imports from outside the EU is needlessly keeping prices higher for British consumers than they need be.
WHAT is remarkable about these two interventions is that they are businessmen calling not just for Brexit but for a “hard” Brexit. They don’t want the UK to pussyfoot around – to carry out the instructions of the British electorate in leaving the EU but in such a way that leaves us half-in, half-out.
Dyson reached his conclusion that Britain would be best leaving the EU by studying what happened to Singapore when it gained independence from Malaysia in 1965. Then a third world country, it has grown in the space of two generations to have the third highest GDP per capita in the world.
Singapore has grown wealthy not because it has massive natural resources – in the way, for example, the Gulf states have grown rich on the back of oil. It has succeeded by being unapologetically pro-business.
Naturally the Left has reacted