Anyone who worked for a British manufacturing company in one of the many industries that we have totally lost over the last century will easily recognise the ever more strident calls to weed out the saboteurs and end the negative thinking about Brexit. This is what happens when any organisation is run by people who don't know what they're doing.
I first noticed this in the seventies. The company I worked for became successful by manufacturing American designed machines modified slightly for the British market. But as it expanded, mostly in a completely haphazard way, the need arose to design our own. And so began a long and wearying slide downwards to disaster.
Someone at the top would get a crazy idea and one of the engineers was tasked with developing a new machine, let's call it a mark II. Sales of the old mark I were falling against foreign competitors and a director had decided we needed a new machine. Usually, the engineer chosen to handle the project would have even less of an idea of what was needed than the director, who never dirtied his clothes on site or spoke to customers. In fact they took it as an insult if anyone suggested doing market research to find out what buyers actually wanted - they would have what we decide to give them!
A few months later a prototype would be unveiled. Salesmen would look at it and someone, this would normally be the most outspoken, would say what we all were thinking. "That's no good because it ......" and he would go on to explain some fundamental issue that rendered it unsaleable. It was obvious to all that it was a dog. The salesman would immediately be attacked by the directors for negative thinking and we knew he would soon be out, either leaving voluntarily or being sacked. We probably all had criticisms but anyone with a family or a mortgage would look at each other - and then proclaim the mark II an absolute world-beater. It was in a small way what people do to survive in totalitarian regimes.
This, or something very like it, is probably what happened when the Austin Allegro was first unveiled to staff at British Leyland in 1972 or so. Executives no doubt stood around in pin striped suits grinning with evident pride in bringing forth what they thought was a product to save the company but what others knew to be an utter stinker.
Brexit is really the political equivalent of that Allegro. It's a disaster, but to say so at the moment is to invite attacks. Take comfort in the fact that nobody nowadays looks back on the Allegro as a great success. The same will be true of Brexit.
This, or something very like it, is probably what happened when the Austin Allegro was first unveiled to staff at British Leyland in 1972 or so. Executives no doubt stood around in pin striped suits grinning with evident pride in bringing forth what they thought was a product to save the company but what others knew to be an utter stinker.
Brexit is really the political equivalent of that Allegro. It's a disaster, but to say so at the moment is to invite attacks. Take comfort in the fact that nobody nowadays looks back on the Allegro as a great success. The same will be true of Brexit.
