Brave business leaders on Brexit
In the 2016 Brexit referendum, the loudest institutional voices, the CBI, the IMF, the Treasury, most of the FTSE 100, and Downing Street itself, were all lined up behind Remain. Business leaders who broke ranks knew they would be cast as reckless or self-interested, and all three took real flak for it. Dyson in particular was accused of hypocrisy given that some of his manufacturing was already overseas, and commentators seized on that. Martin faced boycott calls and mockery in the press. Going against your own trade bodies and much of the commentariat, in a campaign that quickly became personal took some courage.
Their customer bases, Wetherspoons drinkers and Timpson's shoe-repair and key-cutting shops, were plausibly more Leave-sympathetic than the average FTSE company. Backing Brexit may have cost them élite approval while costing them little or nothing commercially. Indeed, it might have improved their standing with a chunk of their customers.
Dyson's core argument was about control and independence rather than economics narrowly conceived. He had said as early as 2014 that he would vote to leave to avoid being ‘dominated and bullied by the Germans,’ and framed the choice in terms of sovereignty over Britain's own destiny. "We will be in control of our destiny. And control, I think, is the most important thing in life and business." His economic claim was that leaving would be a net positive for jobs and growth.
He backed this with money rather than just words. Just months after the referendum, he announced a £250 million expansion of his manufacturing facility in the Cotswolds, creating jobs for 450 skilled engineers. After the vote, his position hardened into support for leaving the single market, too. He argued this would liberate the economy and allow Britain to strike its own trade deals.
Tim Martin's case was built heavily around dismissing Remain's economic warnings as fear-mongering, plus a broader anti-establishment, anti-‘expert’ framing. He argued that predictions of post-Brexit food price rises and shortages were scaremongering tactics by pro-EU journalists, and pointed to the absence of queues in his own pubs as evidence.
More broadly, his public campaigning, on Radio 4's Today, Question Time and Farming Today, leaned on deriding expert opinion and ‘the elite’ as a class that had made Britain's relationship with Europe all wrong. He backed the campaign financially too, donating £200,000 to Vote Leave in 2016.
John Timpson's public reasoning the most distinctively phrased. He described leaving as ‘a risk worth taking.’ That is consistent with a businessman known for a fairly unsentimental, entrepreneurial risk tolerance rather than someone building a detailed sovereignty or trade case.
The common thread across all three, is partly economic misgivings, and partly a shared instinct that involved a distrust of externally-imposed rules and forecasts, and a bet that British businesses, including their own businesses would do fine, or better, running themselves.
Between them they were powerful voices, belying the claim that business backed Remain. In doing so, they made a significant contribution to helping Leave achieve victory.
Madsen Pirie