Fact-Check: James Dyson’s Claims About Brexit

Billionaire James Dyson has just come out strongly for Brexit, claiming it will make the UK richer. So time for a fact-check: does what he says add up?

(Full disclosure: whilst I’m leaning pro-Remain at the moment, I’d very much like to believe that there is a credible case that Leave could be right on the economics too. I’m also a successful British entrepreneur, and“we’re likely to be OK either way” is a much more palatable option to be staring in the face than “we’re in real trouble if we leave”.)

Do Dyson’s claims add up?

No, they don’t. Dammit. He claims Remain are saying things they aren’t, wildly overstates the strength of Britain’s negotiating position, cites UK policy as being influenced by the EU when it isn’t, and lists one of his major concerns as not being able to personally influence the laws of the land.

(Mr Dyson might be in a position to influence UK policy and laws personally if we Brexit, and I can see that’s appealing for him, but I don’t really see why it would be appealing for me.)

The Details

Mr Dyson makes a number of separate claims in the article. I’ll address them individually.

“The Remain campaign tells us no one will trade with us if we leave the EU.”

I’ve heard this alleged Remain claim cited a couple of times by Leave campaigners, but I’ve yet to find any evidence of anyone in the key Remain campaigners actually saying this.

Certainly the economic studies that Remain usually quotes — from the CBI and HM Treasury — assume that trade with the EU and the rest of the world will continue, and work from there.

However, let’s assume Mr Dyson was overstating for effect and continue.

“The EU would be committing commercial suicide to impose a tariff because we import £100bn [of goods] and we only send £10bn there.”

I have no idea where Mr Dyson’s getting his statistics here. I searched but can’t find any backing for those numbers. Parliament’s official report on the balance of trade between the EU and the UK has us importing £291bn of goods and services and exporting £223bn worth.

That still theoretically means that — in a weird world where tariffs increasing prices didn’t affect volume of purchase — we’d make slightly more than the EU if both imposed identical tariffs which were uniform across all goods types.

However, to assume that is to treat the EU as a single country.

It’s not one single country.

A majority of the EU’s remaining 27 countries would have to agree to any Free Trade Agreement. However, half of our trade surplus (profit) from trade with the EU is accounted for by just 2 members (I’ve done some preliminary checking of these figures and they appear legit) — Germany and the Netherlands. Many of the other 25 members, assuming the same situation (tariffs don’t affect purchase volume), would benefit from tariffs imposed both ways or simply wouldn’t care much.

Which makes Dyson’s “they’d have to be crazy” comment massively less true for most of the people who would be voting.

On the subject of crazy and negotiation, meanwhile: exports to the EU are 43% of our total exports. Meanwhile, on average exports to the UK for each individual member state are 10% or less of their exports. It’s around 5% for Poland, and around 7% for France. Only Ireland and Cyprus send us more than 10% of their exports.

As mentioned above, I’m an experienced entrepreneur, and those numbers give me the fear.

There’s a standard rule in negotiation — the person who cares less wins.

Who cares less in that case — the UK, risking nearly half of all our exports, or, say, Poland, risking five percent of theirs?

“At the moment, if we want to hire a foreign engineer, it takes four and a half months to go through the Home Office procedure. It’s crazy.”

I completely agree. And I have friends running massive venture-capital backed startups who would agree even more vociferously. It’s well known to be a huge problem in the UK that companies can’t easily hire foreign talent.

I’d love to see it change. Unfortunately Brexit won’t change it at all. This is UK government policy not EU policy (here’s a source on that). The only change Brexit would make is that it would also make it harder to employ EU nationals.

Maybe a Brexit-focused government would loosen immigration rules — but given that “less immigration” is one of the big things they’re campaigning for, I can’t really see it.

“Never once during 25 years ever got any clause or measure that we wanted into a European directive.”

I can certainly see why this makes Brexit more attractive for Mr Dyson: as one of the UK’s preeminent businessmen and a prominent supporter of Brexit, I can really believe he’d have a lot more influence on the laws under which he operates post-Brexit.

However, he doesn’t offer any evidence that people who aren’t billionaire entrepreneurs will have more influence, or that it’s better to have a British billionaire influencing our business laws than non-British ones.

Which is all a bit of a pain. I really hoped that Mr Dyson would offer a credible vision of a successful Britain post-Brexit, but no such luck.