Why so gung-ho about 'no deal' Dominic Raab? Your constituents aren’t so sure and your figures don’t stack up!
On 14th January 2019, the day before voting against his own Government’s Withdrawal Agreement, Dominic Raab gave a speech at the Centre for Policy Studies about his vision for
“a bright future for small businesses, workers and consumers”
in a post-Brexit UK. [Source]
He opened by brushing away the “alarmism” of those who don’t share his “optimism” for the future and advised businesses that, while some measure of uncertainty at this juncture is “inevitable”, they know better than most that “standing still is not an option”. “Brexit will not just go away”, he reassured – or threatened? – them.
So, our local MP – who negotiated the Brexit deal he voted against and dismisses No Deal warnings from business leaders, from the CBI to the NFU – thinks that such uncertainty and instability is just, well, one of those things. Is that what the businesses of Esher and Walton think?
I’ve read Dominic Raab’s speech closely. He mentioned the word “opportunities” a remarkable 12 times. But what these are, in his vision for the post-Brexit UK, remains unclear.
He is “optimistic about our economy” and shows why using examples of the many opportunities businesses have benefited from while being in the EU:
We attracted the second largest amount of FDI in the world in the first half of 2018.
We also attracted in 2018 almost double the tech VC funding of our nearest European rival, Berlin.
London is home to 36 unicorns (companies valued at over $1bn).
But look closer at these examples and a fault line opens up between where we are now, and where we might end up in the “bright future” of Raab’s optimistic imagination. The FDI figures come from a UN report, which explains that the “surge” of FDI into the UK in the first half of 2018 was down to intra-firm loans.
Roll forward a year to spring 2019 and a new set of figures show that nearly £1 trillion of assets has either been moved out of the UK, or is in the process of being moved, by banks, insurance firms and asset managers preparing for Brexit. [Source]
On tech VC funding, the same set of figures quoted by Raab show the UK is losing ground to other European cities as Brexit draws nearer. Investment into Berlin doubled in 2018 and in Paris it rose by nearly 40 percent. In London? Down 29 percent.
Raab’s 36 unicorns are real – a testament to London’s growth over the past 10 years as the centre of the European tech scene, powered by young entrepreneurs and skilled workers drawn to our vibrant capital from all over the world. But Brexit will change all that. Start-ups can quite easily get-up and go; and 4 in 10 tech companies are actively looking to relocate post-Brexit. [Source]
But let’s park those “alarmist” quibbles for now. What are the “opportunities of Brexit” that would otherwise – Raab says – be “choked off” by the deal he negotiated and now disparages? Well, the UK will be a “global leader in free trade” which will “boost SMEs” by reducing barriers and expanding opportunities so that they can “create the innovative and better paid jobs of the future”.
For Raab, that means: “the start-up, looking to scale up by selling their product or service abroad to a new market [and] the consumers here at home would benefit from a wider choice of cheaper goods in the shops.” Sadly, Raab’s erstwhile Cabinet colleagues are unlikely to deliver this dream for him. The Trade Secretary Liam Fox has failed to secure the replacement trade deals he promised for existing markets, let alone new ones. [Source: BBC]. The Environment Secretary Michael Gove has admitted that food prices are likely to rise in the event of a no-deal Brexit due to higher tariffs. [Source: The Guardian]
The Brexiteers in Government have publicly failed to deliver on their reckless promises to the British people. So why should we trust a Brexiteer who left Government, rather than take responsibility for the mess he created, when he now promises us a “bright future” if only we’d share his optimism?
Real jobs are at stake, here and now. Yet Raab wants us to look beyond that, to a fanciful future where British “buccaneering free traders” can be a “force for good in the world, liberalising trade … to help poorer countries stand on their own two feet”. Don’t just take his word for it: the Maldives’ Ambassador to the UK has “extolled the opportunities that Brexit, and deeper free trade, offers his country”. Mainly in relation to tuna exports.
Can our local MP quote business leaders in his own constituency who have spoken to him so positively about Brexit and the opportunities it will offer them? (And does that involve free trade with the Maldives?) Has he listened to local SMEs to understand how they are feeling during this period of uncertainty and what he might do to help?
As I talk to the owners of local business, and residents of Esher and Walton who work in London-based business, they see things a little differently from their local MP. Many of them think of Brexit as a nightmare that has to be got through and managed, and a no-deal as a catastrophe. Many of them can’t quite believe we’ve got to this stage, three weeks away from a no-deal that would see us crashing out of Europe, and are appalled that their local MP seems not too bothered by it.
To them, and to me, Brexit doesn’t spell out opportunities but closing down access. That loss of opportunity doesn’t need to be inevitable. Esher and Walton deserve better than that.