Sir James Dyson would make a good therapist for anxious Brexiteers. Everything about him is comfortingly precise — his manner and way of speaking, his owlish round glasses and blow-dried white hair. He exudes a Zen-like calm.
What he has to say is reassuring, too. He is as sunnily optimistic about leaving the EU as he was before the referendum last year.
‘I am very confident,’ he says, ‘in our ability to negotiate trade deals outside Europe — with Japan, Australia, China, America and so on — because it’s very easy. It’s just us negotiating with them. It’s very, very straightforward and you don’t have to satisfy 27 other people.’
The implication is that a deal with the EU will be harder. He confirms: ‘My view is we almost certainly won’t get a deal. We’ll have to walk away.’
But Dyson doesn’t think that matters. Falling back on World Trade Organisation rules would be ‘no big deal’, he says, because for him it would just lead to a 3 per cent tariff.
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