Don’t pull up the drawbridge, warns Next’s chief
NEXT Chief Executive Lord Wolfson, one of the FTSE 100’s leading Eurosceptics, has warned of dire consequences if Britain ‘pulls up the drawbridge’ and adopts protectionist trade policies following the vote to leave the EU.
Wolfson said he still supported Brexit but that key issues had not been discussed during a campaign dominated by the immigration debate.
But he said: ‘There is a big opportunity. If we make the right choice we will succeed and if we make the wrong one we will fail.’
Wolfson, who was speaking in a personal capacity and not on behalf of the £6.3 billion stock marketlisted clothing company he runs, said: ‘This whole debate has been couched as if the most important thing is to leave or stay. But the most important thing is what we decide to do next.
‘We could be looking at an economic renaissance if Britain looks to the rest of the world and returns to being one of the great free-trading, outward-looking economies.’
But he said the Leave campaign had been divided into free trade enthusiasts and isolationists, who formed the majority.
He said: ‘If we turn the wrong direction, pull the drawbridge up and become protectionists, we face a very severe economic slowdown.’
Lord Wolfson is married to a former Treasury adviser and is on the board of Eurosceptic think tank Open Europe.
He kept a low profile during an increasingly toxic Brexit debate but his views on the economy are highly influential in the City. His opinions might unsettle those who voted in reaction to globalisation and the rise of the free market.
But he said there was now an opportunity to reduce regulation from Europe and within the UK. ‘The big issue is the endless stream of new regulation. It’s about slowing that down and letting us get on with running our businesses,’ he said. Planning regulations are ‘strangling’ house building, he said, adding: ‘There is a fundamental divide in the Leave campaign. People like me who believe Europe is over-regulated and would like to live in a more liberal economy and another part which is quite the opposite.
‘The vast majority of Remain are in the former camp. If you take the 20 or 30 per cent of the Leave camp who believe an outward-looking Britain is going to be a more prosperous one and add them to the Remain camp who are also in favour of free trade, then we could have a big majority.
‘We could see a coalition who don’t want an isolationist Britain.’