The Vacuum of Logic

There was a puff-piece in the Times Magazine on Saturday on James Dyson, who lives about a mile from us at Doddington Park.

Dyson has always worn his Brexit enthusiasm like a badge of honour. Sovereignty, freedom, innovation – the usual drumbeat. Yet scratch the surface and the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own illogic.

Dyson’s business never needed Brexit. His headquarters are in Singapore, his factories in Malaysia and the Philippines, his biggest markets in Asia. Brussels was never telling him where to put a production line or who he could sell a hairdryer to. He already had the sovereignty he claims Britain was denied. For him, Brexit was an irrelevance – except as a convenient stick with which to beat the EU over regulations he personally disliked, like the motor wattage limits that suited his German competitors.

That’s where the ideological gloss starts to peel. He paints Brexit as liberation, but it looks much more like self-interest. The EU rules he fought and lost against still bind his continental rivals, while he operates under looser regimes abroad. In that sense, Brexit was a clever way to hobble competitors without exposing himself to any of the pain. Patriotism had precious little to do with it.

But here’s the kicker: it isn’t just continental rivals who’ve been left floundering. UK-based manufacturers, who might once have competed with him at home or in Europe, are now shackled by Brexit red tape. They can’t export seamlessly into the EU anymore, they have to duplicate certification, and they face higher input costs thanks to disrupted supply chains and labour shortages. The supposed sovereignty dividend has worked against them, while Dyson remains untouched offshore.

The contradiction is glaring. He praises “independence” while being independent of Britain’s economic struggles. He lauds deregulation while his customers and suppliers in the UK drown in new paperwork. He insists Brexit was worth it while others pick up the bill. For Dyson plc, Brexit was never a gamble. For British exporters and farmers it’s been a slow bleed.

And yet he doesn’t back-pedal, because why would he? Ideologically, he hates the EU. Personally, he’s insulated from the costs. Admitting the obvious would mean conceding that his sovereignty sermon was hollow from the start. So he clings to the line that Britain is better off, while quietly building his fortune far from the mess he helped create.

Brexit through Dyson’s eyes is the neatest trick of all: claim sovereignty, shift your empire offshore, and let both your EU rivals and your UK competitors pay the price.