This is Frost:
"Trying to win back Remain voters when we remain so unpopular among them is surely a losing strategy. Even Rishi Sunak, about as Remainer-friendly a Brexiteer as you can get, is at minus 35 per cent popularity among Remain voters. Surely it’s better to try to bring back people who actually voted for us very recently, in an election that we won, rather than pretend to be something different in the hope of attracting people who didn’t?
"It bears noting, uncomfortable though it may be for some, that, despite everything, Boris Johnson is about 10 percentage points more popular than the Prime Minister among both Leavers and 2019 Tory voters. So maybe we need at least a change in tone to match the former PM’s relentless optimism, his determination that leaving the EU could make life better for those who had entrusted the Tories with their vote and for those who yet might."
At least Frost recognises the Tories are unpopular with Remain voters. His problem is that they are now in the majority. The party never reached out to the 48% because they assumed that figure would fall as time went by and we began to see the benefits of Brexit and the folly of voting to remain in the EU.
That never happened and the 48% is now touching 63% who think Brexit has been a big mistake, including more than 20% of leave voters.
However, the phrase that really struck me is the one about Johnson’s “relentless enthusiasm.” This is precisely what got us into the Brexit mess in the first place! There's nothing wrong with having enthusiasm, even the relentless variety but it must be something that is clearly defined and achievable. The Johnson type is always anything but.
Let me give an anecdote to illustrate this. In the mid-nineties, I had started working for a French company and I got my first order, for two machines with a value of £180,000 (I remember it well) and found myself in France at the factory (without the client) to finalise the details for what they termed a ‘project launch’ - something they did for every new order. This was new to me, at my former (British) employer you simply handed a file to a contracts engineer, made your excuses and left as quickly as possible. That was it.
The French handled things quite differently. Every department (mechanical, electrical, service, finance) sent a representative to the meeting and all had reviewed the file beforehand. At the launch meeting everybody around the table was asked in turn if there were any issues, was everything OK?
This particular client had already placed an order with another British competitor the previous year, had huge problems (the system never worked properly at all) and forced them to take the machine back and return all the money, the first and only time in fifty years I ever knew this to happen. So, I was well aware that we had to get it right or suffer the consequences.
I was very confident we had covered all the angles and I knew the French equipment worked well and they knew what they were doing. The job had to be installed and working in two weeks (tight), ready for the client's busy season. There was no room for mistakes.
Then, they asked what could go wrong, what problems might arise and how could they be mitigated. I was stunned. What were they doing? I looked around the table. Someone from the service department raised a point about operators gaining access inside a hazardous area over a mesh safety fence using some nearby racking to help. It was a very remote possibility, and you would have to be crazy to try, but they decided to fit some additional fencing to rule out any possible chance.
There was no “relentless optimism” that it would all be fine and it taught me a lot. It’s better to think head-on about what might go wrong, face up to it and have a proper plan to deal with any problems. You might not pick everything up but far better to go into something with your eyes open.
At my former company, it was customary to ignore any potential issues for as long as possible and hope they didn't arise. There was an awful lot of 'relentless enthusiasm', and nearly all of it dashed sooner or later, usually later with frequently costly results. It's nearly always much cheaper to fix things at the factory rather than on site later.
In the event, my first order went very smoothly and the system started up on time with no issues. A few weeks later I called in to see if all was well and bumped into the MD showing a journalist around the installation, which was working flat-out, in preparation for an article in a trade journal!
I know it's unfair to compare this to Brexit but on my little order there was serious thinking before the bid was submitted and a lot more planning before any work was started. Brexit had almost none, at any time before the fateful decision and not that much afterward.
Amazing!
