Dyson dumps Brexit Britain, taking HQ to Singapore

It's absolutely, positively not to do with Brexit, says the company founded by arch Brexiteer Sir James Dyson. This is about 'future proofing'. How does that make it any better?

Sir James Dyson, the founder of Dyson, which is moving its corporate HQ from Wiltshire to Singapore (Getty)

“Believe in Britain,” is what the Brexiteers like to say, at least those that don’t wear yellow vests and can string a coherent sentence together without spitting.

But wait, what’s this? It seems one of their biggest business heroes, one of the very few leading businesspeople who doesn’t think Brexit is an act of collective national insanity, doesn’t.

Sir James Dyson, the British billionaire inventor and outspoken Brexiteer, is moving the corporate HQ from Wiltshire to Singapore. Where Dyson also makes electric cars. In preference to Britain.

This is, we are told, absolutely, positively nothing to do with Brexit. No siree. Instead it’s about “future proofing“ the business. And it was a board decision which Sir James was involved in.

I’m not sure that makes it any better. If Britain has such glowing economic prospects, and the bright and shiny future the Brexiteers like to claim for it in the event of the no deal Sir James has advocated, then surely Dyson would be future proofed here?

Of course, there is the small matter of all the available evidence that says that were the government to follow Sir James’s Brexit advice by walking away and waiting for European firms to “come to us” it’d be a godawful mess. A mess Sir James and his boardroom colleagues will now be able to watch from halfway across the world where the supply chains his factories out there rely upon won’t face any disruption from the expected foul ups at customs created by the walls Brexit Britain wants to put up with its biggest trading partner.

You could always have a laugh at David Cameron’s expense at this point, and that’s fun given he bears a great deal of responsibility for the unfolding chaos. The former PM once described Dyson as a “Great British success story”. Except that Dyson isn’t apparently British any more. Instead we are supposed to think of it as a “global technology company”.

But let’s face it, given what we now know, that statement doesn’t even come close to being the doziest thing Mr Cameron has said.

Dyson will, it should be said, still have operations in Britain, but the direction of travel is pretty clear. We’re now of secondary importance to this global tech champion. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

Talking of politicians and dozy statements, it’s not much of a result for Theresa May’s poor old “Global Britain”. Although, curiously, she doesn’t seem to say that much anymore.

She doesn’t say anything much that makes sense on the subject of Brexit. She’s got that in common with Sir James.