The boss of Jaguar Land and Rover was left red faced and sweaty yesterday after admitting professional piece of chipboard, Owen Paterson MP (for being a piece of chipboard) knows more about making and selling cars than he does.
”It’s right up there with my recurring dream about turning up for work with no trousers on,” the red faced car giant said, visibly shaken, “a total nightmare. Schooled by Paterson? No one has ever said that before!”
The hard lesson in international trade was delivered to the boss of one of the UK’s biggest automakers after the know it all blathered in the press about the cost to manufacturing of Brexit, which he estimates at a nominal £1.2Bn per year for all three firms that comprise Jaguar, Land and Rover.
”It’s a good thing Owen was there to remind me that we can source exhausts more cheaply from an independent supplier in Patagonia,” JLR’s man mumbled,
“for years we’ve been modelling various Brexit scenarios and not once did it occur to us to factor in the ‘what if’s’ of the glorious and instantaneous free trade deals Liam Fox is arranging for the day after Brexit,
“I feel such a fool now. Just in time and just in sequence, those are the sort of trade deals our government will deliver to keep my business both in Britain and in the black,
“Hundreds of thousands of British workers have Owen Paterson MP (for being a piece of chipboard) to thank for educating me on the exciting possibilities Brexit opens up for automakers in our United Kingdom.”
In order to provide balance we sought further comment from the wise old head of British manufacturing himself.
”These so called captains of industry,” Paterson shrugged, “It’s come to something when a humble publicly funded zealot like myself has to explain their business to them. But there you have it,
“For two years we’ve tried threatening multi-nationals behind closed doors to get behind Brexit and push,
”Then we tried financial “incentives”,
“Now they’ve shown themselves to have weak knees and begun running about the press like headless chickens banging on about profit and loss, customs, tariffs, extra red tape, country of origin and all those other boring things great minds ignore, we’ve had to swap tack.”
And what tack have you swapped to?
”Jamming our fingers firmly in our ears and going ‘nah nah nah nah’, until they shut up and go away.”