The Daily Telegraph - 01.08.2019

28 ***^ Thursday 1 August 2019 The Daily Telegraph

B

oris Johnson and

Emmanuel Macron are the

true political twins, the

sibling intellectual leaders

of sibling nations with a

powerful sense of their

own historical exceptionalism.

Donald Trump is thousands of

cultural miles away from this intimate

fraternity. His populism is of an

entirely different kind, with objectives

that have nothing in common with the

green, liberal, free-market, pro-

immigrant and globalist ideology of

Borisian Brexit.

Whatever sort of political animal Mr

Macron purported to be two or three

years ago, there can no longer be

much doubt that his true colouring

has nationalist hues. Note the Croix de

Lorraine suddenly appearing in the

Macronian coat of arms at the

Élysée Palace?

This heraldic double cross dating

back into the mists of medieval France

was of the symbol of defiance after the

loss of Alsace and Lorraine in 1871. The

maquisard Resistance revived it in the

Second World War.

It was on the flag of Free French

forces who landed on Juno Beach in

1944. It is potent stuff.
      “Nationalism is a betrayal of
      patriotism,” said Mr Macron at the
      D-Day memorial to fervent applause
      from the gullible globalists. But where
      does the line between them lie, and
      how many times has he himself
      crossed it?
      Evocation of French symbols is a
      hallmark of his presidency. You could
      hardly miss the copy of Mémoires de
      Guerre by Charles de Gaulle sitting
      open on his desk in the official
      portrait. The Left-leaning books of
      Indian Nobel economist Amartya Sen
      and Labour’s Anthony Giddens – once
      his guides – are long gone.
      Mr Macron abandoned the Socialist
      Party that reared him when it no
      longer served as a trampoline. This
      énarque from the sanctum sanctorum
      of the French elite campaigned in 2017
      as a “populist” outsider – with a
      chutzpah that exceeds anything that
      Boris has ever done – against those
      same elites quietly funding him. He
      then reinvented himself as the heir to
      General de Gaulle, the incarnation of
      La France éternelle.
      There is a coherence to this

Boris Johnson’s true political

confrère is Macron – not Trump

Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron are closer bedfellows than they like to make out

amBrose

eVaNs-pritCharDCharD

H

as anyone seen Andy

Palmer? Perhaps an

AA patrol car should be

dispatched to look for

him. The boss of Aston

Martin went missing

yesterday, refusing to take questions

from The Daily Telegraph about the

company’s latest breakdown.

You can understand his reticence.

Palmer’s dream machine has been

churning out a constant stream of

nightmares. The latest, a whacking

great £80m half-year loss, wiped

another 12pc off its share price, just

one week after a profit warning that

sparked a plunge of a quarter.

Nine months after the carmaker

flogged shares at the princely sum of

£19 a pop, the share price has sunk to

yet another fresh low of less than £5.

At least Palmer can say he’s consistent,

if nothing else.

Yet, rather than seeking to address a

catalogue of issues that have led to a

precipitous 75pc dive in the company’s

stock, Aston Martin’s boss has, it

appears, chosen

instead to sulk,

incensed by the

criticism levelled

at him in a

column I wrote

last week.

Palmer’s

communications

advisers claim the

comments were

personal. They

weren’t. I said

Palmer was guilty of over-hyping the

company’s prospects. He was and the

cold, hard numbers it has produced

since going public speak for

themselves.

This isn’t a luxury goods producer

in the mould of a Gucci, Burberry or

LVMH, as he claimed in the run-up to

its listing. It is a niche manufacturer of

expensive sports cars.

Any suggestion that it can target the

super-rich with speedboats,

submarines, apartments and other

aspirational areas on any meaningful

scale is for the birds, on current

performance. At the moment, it is

struggling with the simple basics –

‘This isn’t a

luxury goods

producer in

the mould of

a Gucci,

Burberry or

LV M H ’

Nobody at

the wheel

of Aston

Martin

Ben

Marlow

n

rlow

making a profit from selling cars. Last

week’s warning resulted in sales

forecasts being slashed by up to 1,000

cars to 6,300 for the year, and a cut to

margins and capex.

Just one week later and it has swung

from a profit of £20.8m at the half-year

stage last time to a thumping loss of

£78m.

Palmer, though, is refusing to

acknowledge that there is a serious

problem. Instead he is sticking with

the line that it is on the right

trajectory. “This is not a failing

business, this is a business with

outsized ambition,” he told the

Financial Times at the weekend, in

typically emphatic fashion.

Unfortunately an increasing

number of experts disagree with that

assessment. Analysts at Canaccord

believe it will almost certainly have to

raise cash to bolster a balance sheet

already laden with £700m of debt as it

attempts to fulfil a promise to more

than double production to 14,000

vehicles over the next few years. Bank

of America thinks it may need to tear

up those forecasts too and find fresh

funds of up to £500m to survive.

Now Bernstein has weighed in,

accusing the company of being “on a

financial knife-edge” that could be

tipped in the coming months. “There’s

now very, very little room for error or

further external pressures, a serious

worry given the potential trouble that

could come from Brexit.”

Palmer should remember the

responsibilities that come with leading

a public company, one of which is

scrutiny from the media.

The former Nissan executive has a

duty to be transparent, not just to

shareholders, but suppliers,

employees and customers. Refusing to

field questions is another smack in the

face for investors, and staff – 40pc

used bonuses to buy shares in the float

• who are nursing huge losses. His
  stance is reminiscent of Persimmon’s
  Jeff Fairburn who refused to talk about
  his £130m bonus, claiming that it was
  a private matter.
  In Aston Martin’s case, there are
  some serious questions to answer, and
  not just about trading. It would be
  good to know why Palmer and the
  company’s main backers sold so many
  shares at the float. Such haste is a
  hardly a vote of confidence.
  Palmer cashed in £35.6m worth of
  shares at the £19 float price, while
  leading shareholders – a collection of
  Kuwaiti funds and Italian private
  equity firm Investindustrial – banked
  £1.2bn at flotation. Najeeb Al
  Humaidhi, a non-executive director,
  recently sold £29.5m worth of shares.
  He should also be clear about the
  problems instead of continually hiding
  behind “external factors”. Try telling
  Burberry and LVMH about a “global
  luxury slowdown”, both of which have
  posted bumper results in recent
  weeks. And Palmer and finance
  director Mark Wilson also need to be
  more forthcoming about the prospect
  of a cash crunch when the spectre of
  insolvency is being raised.
  After all, this is a company that has
  been bankrupt seven times before.

Gaulliste pivot. Mr Macron has

smashed the fetid party system of the

Sarkozy-Hollande era and reduced the

National Assembly to a cipher, just as

de Gaulle – “neither Left nor Right”

• sought to smash the parties of the
  Fourth Republic.
  The official portrait shows Mr
  Macron standing in front of his desk,
  flanked by the Tricolore and the EU
  flag. Be careful of this trademark
  double message. The gold stars of
  Europe confuse a lot of people.
  It has long been Quai d’Orsay
  orthodoxy that France maximises its
  leverage and promotes its national
  power best through the institutional
  system of the EU, but that does not in
  itself make French policy less
  nationalist in purpose. One of Mr
  Macron first acts as president was to
  block a takeover of the French
  shipyards at St Nazaire by Italy’s
  Fincantieri. This breached both spirit
  and law of the EU single market, and
  he knew it.
  France’s Europeanist national
  strategy was compelling in the early
  years of the EU project. The Brussels
  machinery was modelled on the
  French civil service.
  A single Frenchman – Émile Noël –
  ran the Commission from 1958 to 1987.
  Pre-unification Germany wished to
  disguise its own rising power and let
  France lead. The Lotharingian
  condominium worked for both sides.

Today’s talk of Franco-German parity

is quaint etiquette. Berlin took iron

control when push came to shove in

the eurozone debt crisis. This did not

escape the notice of the French

people – just as souverainiste by

natural anthropology as the British. A

Pew survey in June 2016 found that

61pc of French voters had an

“unfavourable” view of the EU,

higher than it was in the UK before

the referendum.

Those numbers are fluid. The surge

of Gallic euroscepticism has since

subsided. But it is a wilful misreading

of Mr Macron’s victory in 2017 to

proclaim it a vote for Europe. It

revealed only the electoral limits of

Marine Le Pen. She still won 34pc

despite all the baggage of the Front

National.

If and when Boris takes up the

invitation to visit Mr Macron, the two

leaders can swap tales on their Second

World War icons, and the Prime

Minister can perhaps give the French

president a bound copy of his

Churchill biography.

They can chew on the Greek and

Latin classics, digress into Averroes

and Islamic scholarship, talk history

for hours, and contrast this richness

with the incorrigible philistinism of

Donald Trump.

They can spar over who is really the

greenest, Mr Macron as the guardian

of the Paris Accord and Boris as the

champion of net zero emissions

by 2050.

If Boris wanted to rattle the

French leader, he could let slip that

one of his first acts is to ditch the Tory

Party’s immigration targets and

explore an amnesty for illegal migrants

• finally killing off the false notion so
  fatally encouraged by Theresa May
  that Brexit is all about immigration.
  Mr Macron has in the meantime
  lurched to the Right with draconian
  curbs on migration, to the point where
  he threatens to outflank the Front
  National and is accused of inhumanity
  by Human Rights Watch for
  allowing the use of pepper spray
  against children.
  They can each parade their
  multiculturalism, Boris a step ahead
  with two Britons of Subcontinent
  backgrounds in his top four offices of
  state, and the son of a Czech Jewish
  refugee at the Foreign Office. Mr
  Macron talks well but his inner core is
  strikingly white.
  So yes, Boris is the more socially
  progressive of the two – hiding this
  from shire Tories with well-honed
  contempt for political correctness –
  but the two leaders are at least in the
  same cultural orbit, alumni of Eton
  and ENA, and citizens of the world.
  Nobody would ever have thought of
  conflating Boris, Brexit and
  contemporary Britain with
  Trumpian anti-globalism if it had not
  been for the accident of concurrent
  timing, and because Mr Trump
  hijacked the Brexit triumph for his
  own campaign purposes.
  I can see why the Liberal
  Democrat’s Jo Swinson wishes to
  muddy the waters by tweeting to great
  applause that “Boris Johnson is
  basically what you’d get if you sent
  Donald Trump to Eton”. It is in her
  urgent interest to do so.
  A centrist Boris threatens to eat her
  political lunch.
  What baffles me is that anybody
  should fall for this slapstick. Why is
  the false equivalence of Brexit and
  Trumpism so mechanically repeated
  across the world in the face of
  overwhelming evidence?
  Let us just say that perceptions are
  “sticky” – to borrow a term from
  Keynesian economics. In the end the
  truth will out.
  Stay the liberal course, Boris, and
  dazzle your critics with actions.

‘The two leaders are at least

in the same cultural orbit,

alumni of Eton and ENA,

and citizens of the world’

Business comment

Seven steps SMEs should

take to prepare for no deal

By Jack Torrance

SINCE moving into Downing Street,

Boris Johnson has insisted he can get

the EU’s negotiators back around the

table and hammer out a new Brexit

deal that can make it through

Parliament. But his elevation to Prime

Minister, and his appointment of

staunch Brexiteers to key Cabinet

posts, has stoked concerns that Britain

will leave without a deal in October.

Earlier this week, the CBI warned

that “no one is ready for no deal”,

publishing a report that called on the

Government to do more to prepare and

to make businesses aware of how they

are likely to be affected.

“Most companies could deal with

most things if they knew what they

were, but there has been such a lot of

uncertainty,” says Malcolm Cohen, an

ex-head of trade at the Department for

International Trade who now works

for business adviser Newable.

Here are some of the steps importers

and exporters should take to make

sure they are ready for any upheaval.

Scour your supply chain

Even if you think you don’t do any

business with the EU, it’s worth having

a thorough look at all the goods that

pass through your business and where

they come from and go to. “Businesses

may be more affected than they know

or less than they fear,” says Cohen.

If your supplier’s supplier is

dependent on a raw material from

Sweden, then it’s worth doing your

research to see if there are any

alternatives. Likewise if your main

customer uses your product to make

goods destined for the Polish market.

Apply for an EORI number

“If you import or export from the EU,

this is something you will need from

day one,” says Suren Thiru of the

British Chambers of Commerce. An

Economic Operator Registration and

Identification (EORI) number is used

by customs to identify your business

and ensure you pay the correct tax.

It is usually your VAT number

followed by three zeros, but you need

to register online for it to work.

“It’s dead easy to get – a simple

online form,” says Alison Horner of

accountant MHA MacIntyre Hudson.

Companies that do business beyond

the EU should have one already. 

Register for simplified

import procedures

In the event of no deal, the

Government will temporarily let

UK-registered companies defer

submitting full customs declarations

and paying duties on imports in the

hope of avoiding too much congestion

at borders. You need an EORI to apply

and can register online.

Check your tariffs

In March the Government set out

plans to slash most UK tariffs in the

event of no deal to minimise the costs

consumers have to pay for imported

goods. Brussels is yet to make a similar

pledge, meaning exports to the EU

would likely be hit by the bloc’s World

Trade Organisation “most favoured

nation” tariffs. You can check what

those are online – from a €2.60 (£2.40)

per kilo levy on table salt to a 7.7pc

levy on the value of live donkeys.

Consider appointing a

customs agent

Cost-conscious entrepreneurs may be

tempted to try to navigate the

intricacies of the customs system on

their own but the complexity and

specialist software needed can make

this a false economy.

“Customs declarations are not

something that’s done easily – it can be

very difficult to do it without an

agent,” says Horner.

But a typical import declaration will

cost around £55 per consignment – an

unwelcome prospect for companies

importing small batches of products. 

Apply for product-specific

licences

Some goods, such as animal products,

will need specific labelling and in

some cases extra certification to be

exported to the EU if there is no deal.

Hedge your bets

Most currency traders believe a

no-deal Brexit would hammer the

pound. It is worth considering how

this could affect your finances.

While cheap sterling could make

your products more attractive to

foreign customers, it could also push

up your costs. And if rates fluctuate

dramatically, you could be left

receiving significantly less cash when

your customer settles their invoice

than you expected when you shipped

the product. 

THOMAS BROOM

РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS