Be brave Boris, and free up business like Thatcher in the 80s
AFRIEND who campaigned for Brexit sent me a message which said: this year Christmas dinner was not only a celebration of Christmas, but a celebration without Brussels. It is the season to celebrate and it is terrific that Boris has achieved a deal. New Year’s Eve was turned from a wake to a joyful event.
For me as a Brexiteer who put money behind Boris at the last Election, Brexit has always been about regaining our sovereignty.
Areas like fishing may not be of overall economic concern but it is essential we take back control of our own waters. Brexit is for the long term – so as long as we have control, a transition period of a few years makes no difference.
Getting the deal over the line offers a huge opportunity to encourage investment both by overseas companies and those already operating in the UK.
The suggestion that we should immediately start repaying the Government debt racked up by the Covid crisis is for the birds.
Borrowing rates are so low that the cost of servicing the debt is minuscule in the context of Government expenditure. It is the country’s ability to repay debt over the long term which is important.
Many companies that have earned little or no income over the past year have become more heavily indebted themselves and should not have extra burdens placed upon them at a time they are trying to get their businesses back on track. The Government must focus on freeing business from red tape and reducing taxation already at too high a level.
If we wish to remain a significant power and retain our position in the world we will need to triple the size of our economy over the next 15 to 20 years.
The Government must concentrate on how to do this and create the climate to make this country one of the most attractive in the world to do business in. The Government cannot do it directly itself, it has to create the conditions for private enterprise to develop and thrive and support growing industries like the technology sector.
It must also make sure that companies of strategic importance do not fall into foreign hands. This is something that is already done in the US, Germany, France and many other countries. The financial services sector, the City, is vital to our economy. It is not clear yet whether it will have the same access to Europe as it did before but its main competitors are New York and Singapore.
We are facing a similar situation to that in the 1980s before the Big Bang. Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson clearly saw that deregulation was crucial and that is why the City is the powerhouse it is today. The same needs to be done again in our new situation.
Our banks have repaired themselves much more successfully following the financial crisis than their European counterparts and are in a much stronger financial position today. However, in response to the financial crisis, regulation went too far and restricted the banks’ ability to lend and help business grow.
My industry, hospitality and tourism, is often ignored by the Government because it is largely made up of medium and small enterprises. Yet it makes a huge contribution to the economy representing some 10 per cent of the workforce and 9.5 per cent of GDP.
It’s also a massive earner of foreign currency. It is one of the industries that has suffered most under the current crisis having been more or less shut down over this period after making huge efforts to be secure and safe in terms of the virus. It urgently needs Government help, attention and encouragement.
The proposed investment in infrastructure will be beneficial but it needs more direct support to grow in areas of economic underdevelopment which lend themselves to tourism.
Only two of my current 14 hotels are in the UK, the Balmoral in Edinburgh and Brown’s in London. I am prepared to invest more in tourist destinations outside of London but this will depend on the climate the Government creates after Brexit. Last year, I threw a party at Brown’s for Conservative
Central Office staff after the General Election. Boris dropped by and the mood was euphoric. During Theresa May’s tenure as Prime Minister we Brexiteers were genuinely worried that the referendum result might be overturned.
The Remainer majority in Parliament, the legal challenges, the disgraceful efforts of some politicians to advise Brussels on how to thwart the result and the potential delay caused by a second referendum all combined to create huge uncertainty.
So I backed Boris as the only one I could see who had the optimism and the drive to get Brexit done, which he has now achieved. This is a personal triumph for Boris.
Unfortunately, that euphoria has ebbed away as the Prime Minister fell ill to Covid-19 and now seems to have become a captive of Sage, Matt Hancock and Michael Gove, the lockdown merchants.
I was quite shocked to see that the disgraced Professor Neil Ferguson is still advising on the Nervtag committee despite his promotion of flawed and wildly inaccurate mathematical models which panicked the Government into the first lockdown.
It was unforgivable for Matt Hancock to say the virus was out of control and sensationalise a ‘new strain’ of the virus which, in fact, has been around since before September and is similar to one circulating in South America and Australia in April.
He needed a reason to close down Christmas despite Boris’s previous promises not to do so. Of course, it backfired with the whole of Europe closing its borders to UK travellers and freight.
THE Government focus should be on how to safely open up the economy, not thinking up ever more draconian measures to close it down. We now face the prospect of harsh lockdowns until May – devastating for my industry.
What business can survive on this basis? People are fed up and are openly flouting the rules and the young are not paying any attention at all as they know they are not at risk. The Government continues with a policy which has palpably failed, devastated the economy, bankrupted business and created huge levels of unemployment with still more to come.
This must not be compounded by a short-term approach to dealing with the aftermath of Covid and so squander the opportunities which Brexit brings. Opportunities to bounce this country forward again just as Mrs Thatcher took us out of the doldrums of the 1970s to create a thriving economy.
‘I backed Boris to get Brexit done’