Stop panicking and put the country first

AMID the gruesomely unedifying backstabbing and bloodletting at Westminster, this paper yesterday called on politicians to calm down and put the country first.

Today, we make the same urgent plea to leaders of industry and the City, some of whom have been panicking like startled sheep since the referendum.

True, many employers and exporters— including HSBC, Rolls-Royce, Dixons and Toyota – have proclaimed their faith in post-Brexit Britain, highlighting the advantages it promises to bring.

Meanwhile, investors who vote with their cash have shown similar optimism.

Only yesterday, in a resounding vote of confidence in the City of London, buyers in New York snapped up a £750million bond issue by Lloyds Bank.

And though it is a mistake to read too much into figures that fluctuate daily, it is surely not insignificant that this week the FTSE-100 index recorded its strongest gain for eight years. Hardly the apocalypse Remainers predicted!

Yes, the pound is sharply down against the dollar. But this opens up wonderful opportunities for exporters. Indeed, many eurozone countries would kill for a similarly competitive exchange rate.

Yet driven by a risible herd instinct, timid and perfidious company bosses threaten to move jobs to the continent.

Yesterday, it emerged that Carolyn McCall of easyJet – given a damehood for services to Britain – has opened talks on moving the airline’s legal HQ from the UK. Thus, she joins a rogues’ gallery of others who have threatened to move jobs, including the egregious Goldman Sachs, tax-dodging Vodafone and J.P. Morgan.

What reckless folly to panic like this, just days after the referendum and with at least two years to go before Brexit.

Leave aside that the City, with its 790,000 employees, would barely notice losing a few hundred American bankers.

The truth is that service industries, the mainstay of our economy, are outside the single market and therefore able to carry on dealing with the EU as before. There is also a good chance that City banks will retain their ‘passport’ rights to deal in euros. So what is all the fuss about?

More depressing still, Britain’s most selfimportant business newspaper, the Financial Times (champion of Remain and the euro), is playing panicmonger-in-chief.

All week, this Japanese-owned paper has run doom-laden headlines: ‘Britain is starting to imitate Greece’; ‘Brexit crisis’; ‘Britain has cut itself adrift’.

Is it determined to provoke a downturn, in a bid to justify its lurid predictions?

Worst of all, surely, is George Osborne – architect of Project Fear – who has crept out of hiding to repeat his prophesies of catastrophe. He was at it again yesterday, speaking of ‘economic shock’ and insidiously blaming Brexit for his inability to secure a budget surplus by 2020.

But as the Chancellor knows, he was never going to meet that target, whichever way the vote went. He has only his mismanagement to blame. Mr Osborne must get a grip and stop talking Britain down. Otherwise, he should just go.