IT’S been quite the week for the key pro-Brexit businessmen.
First, James Dyson revealed that he was relocating his business’s headquarters to Singapore – but laughably claimed it had nothing to do with Brexit.
Now it’s JD Wetherspoon’s chairman who is denying any link between leaving the EU and a significant spending slowdown for the chain.
The pub firm’s boss Tim Martin said that it was “bollocks” to link a £40 million hit in additional costs in its half-year profits to consumer fears over Brexit.
He blamed business rates, minimum wage rules and VAT disparity between pubs and supermarkets for the costs.
In fact, Martin doubled down in supporting a no-deal Brexit.
“I have argued that the UK – and therefore Wetherspoon – will benefit from a free trade approach, by avoiding a ‘deal’ which involves the payment of £39 billion to the EU,” he said.
This is a man who is part of a faction that, as Nicola Sturgeon pointed out yesterday, Theresa May is desperately trying to appease with her Brexit deal. Feeling re-assured, Scotland?
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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