Tuesday, 5 February 2019

Nissan has been betrayed by Brexit ideologues

There's something tragically appropriate about the fact that the most high-profile British industrial story, as the country staggers in the direction of a no-deal Brexit, should involve Nissan.
The proximate cause of the Japanese company's reversal of its decision to build a line of SUVs at its Sunderland plant was the collapse of European demand for diesel vehicles. But as its management has made perfectly clear Britain's departure from the EU was a factor too.
It's worth recalling why Nissan is here in the UK at all. In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher practically begged the Japanese firm to establish a plant in Sunderland, promising a smorgasbord of public subsidies and support to make it happen. Such interventionism jars with the popular image of her administration as a callous band of laissez-faire ideologues obsessed with the City of London and happy to let former northern industrial powerhouses crumble.
Yet the biggest lure for the Japanese was not those subsidies, but the UK's position in the European common market. As Keith Joseph, Thatcher's industry minister, wrote in a memo to Thatcher: "Nissan had chosen the United Kingdom because it gave them access to the whole European market. If we were outside the community, it is very unlikely that Nissan would have given the United Kingdom serious consideration as a base for this substantial investment."
Another irony about the Nissan investment is that France and Germany were, in those days, hostile to the idea of allowing Japanese car firms a production bridgehead within the European common market, fearing the impact of the competition on their own domestic automotive manufacturers.
Thatcher overcame those protectionist European impulses and indeed made the creation of a free market, regulation-harmonising, "single market" among the European member states a personal priority. Yet now, 33 years on, we have nominal Tory Thatcherites not only insisting that the UK must leave Thatcher's single market but also airily dismissing the Brexit concerns of Nissan's Japanese management - a management which their heroine was once so keen to court.
The suggestion by the chair of the European Research Group faction within the Tory party, Jacob Rees-Mogg, that because Nissan's former boss Carlos Ghosn stands accused of embezzlement in Tokyo that nothing the company has to say need be taken seriously, shows how far this wing of Conservatism has drifted into denial. The ERG prefers conspiracy theories and witch hunts to listening to firms' worries about trade barriers. Before the private "letter of comfort" to Nissan from the business secretary Greg Clark in 2016 was finally published on Monday, the great fear among these hardliners was that this letter had made unacceptably positive noises about Britain remaining in a customs union with the EU.
Another lip-chewing irony over Nissan is that the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been fretting recently about the restrictiveness of EU aid rules and some of his supporters have gone as far as using this as an argument in favour of total rupture. But the Clark letter revealed £ 80m of promises of UK government assistance for Nissan, with £ 61m of grants formally offered. If such state aid is forbidden under "neoliberal" EU law, as some "Lexiteers" seem to suggest, the EU's institutions and courts have been surprisingly tolerant of it.

The air is thick with accusations of "betrayal" over Brexit. But the reality is that it is Nissan and other foreign corporate investors in the UK that have been betrayed; betrayed by political extremists ignorant of history and by those who find their ideology preferable to reality.

3 comments:

  1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFzuTirrlq0 - read comment

    Jersey C.I - it's the key to unlocking Greyling's brexit dealings with dodgy lawyers offshore.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lets get into Chris Greyling's business dealings and the truth behind this Ramsgate's Ports Of Dover plundering operation


    Background- Jersey Channel Islands and Chris Greyling deals - he is not the only one conspiring with crown interests offshore.


    City Of London's Sir Mark Boleat - http://democracy.cityoflondon.gov.uk/mgUserInfo.aspx?UID=136


    Phiippe Legrain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Legrain
    https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2018/02/14/britains-best-brexit-bet-is-the-jersey-option/

    Jersey's secrecy government created legislation for a hard brexit as early as 2015- it was enacted 18 months ago.

    Mark Boleat - https://www.ft.com/content/94d7d596-f961-11e8-af46-2022a0b02a6c


    At the very same time Mark Boleat , born in Jersey , has been organising the transfer of City Of London Business to Jersey on a mass scale since 2011.

    Chris Greyling ( politically responsible for overseeing law changes and justice in Jersey through ministerial and privy council roles ) and Mark Boleat organises with crown representatives in the island of Jersey to change the system of government in Jersey from a centuries old committee parish system" to a "Ministerial form of government" without any political opposition in 2005.

    Boleat get hundreds of millions from the Jersey Gov to start building substantial office blocks across the islands central coast .......the likes that have never been seen before in the Islands's history - June 2011- June 2015 Chairman of the the private government quango Jersey Development Company - causing uproar in the island


    https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/jsy/news/almost-2000-attend-waterfront-protest/#.XHdULoj7SUk


    Chris Greyling works with Crown representatives in the island to privatise all the harbours and airports - assists crown representatives to appoint CEO Doug Bannister

    https://jerseyeveningpost.com/news/features/2018/09/10/leaving-everything-shipshape/ to assist in the transition to privatisation -
    Bannister does his job and then becomes CEO Of Ports Of Dover to help Chris Greyling and his new Ramsgate operation..... so to shift traffic from Dover to his new Ramsgate operation on behalf of corporates operating offshore in Jersey.


    https://youtu.be/QAAnMXJR-8c?t=352 Bannister says he doesn't know how they want to treat the border - does he look like he is lying ?

    They are going to use Jersey as a conduit for goods to get in the UK because Jersey already has separate trading agreements with the EU - its just a simple regulatory authorisation that can be signed offshore - millions of pounds of taxes on imports are planned to go into the hands of the hidden interests offshore - all thanks to Chris Greyling and Doug Bannister.!

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  3. https://youtu.be/sLXDL74FXe0?t=524

    The company in Jersey is called PORTS OF JERSEY

    ReplyDelete