What a turn up! The British company De La Rue has lost the £490m contract to produce our new "iconic" blue passport! It was won by the French company Gemalto (HERE). A spokesman for De La Rue was on the radio this morning complaining about it! Amazing. It looks like global trading Britain can't actually compete and can only complain afterwards when the contract is lost.
For the first half of my career I worked for a British company like this. And I actually thought, like De La Rue, that we were hard done by when beaten by a foreign competitor. But when I worked for those foreign competitors I realised they won contracts by being better prepared, with better products, better prices and better motivated. They also spent years working to ever become competitive.
There are two conclusions to be drawn here. Firstly, I imagine Gemalto worked especially hard to win the order for the prestige and the message it sends. Secondly, if anyone thinks this kind of thing will end when Brexit happens may have another think coming. Trade deals usually include measures to ensure fair and equal treatment when bidding for government contracts.
As I once posted, after Brexit the EU will move from being compatriots to competitors and they will love to take whatever business they can from us.
