Wings are useful on these things
We’ve been told, among other Remoaner lies, that leaving the European Union would mean Airbus abandoning their manufacturing in this country. Even, that the moment we have the temerity to leave then all those engineers at Filton, in Wales (look, it’s in Wales, who cares where?) will be abandoned to the dole queue as Johnny Foreigner legs it.
This isn’t, of course, what is going to happen. For the rather simple reason that Britain – or plants in Britain perhaps – make the wings for Airbus planes and as these things work out planes without wings aren’t regarded as hugely useful.
Thus this:
Airbus has “no reason” to quit Britain in the event of a bad Brexit deal, according to the plane-maker’s boss.
Guillaume Faury, chief executive of pan-European aerospace business which makes its airliners’ wings at its plant in Broughton, North Wales, said there is a “short-term risk [that] no deal would cause a lot of disruption”.
However, he added: “We have a very strong base in the UK and we are very happy with this industrial base. We have no reason to move production out of the UK. It would be difficult anyway, these are huge industrial systems – you can’t just move them.”
It’s akin to those threats that Europeans will no longer use the City after Brexit. Oh yeah? Where they going to get their money from then?
Underneath the lying from the Remain camp is that basic misunderstanding of the economic world. The insistence is that we’re lucky to be able to produce for these people. Failing to note that the very reason they buy our stuff is because it benefits them to buy our stuff. That benefit doesn’t disappear just because we change which set of bureaucrats rule us.
Why would foreigners stop buying our bits and bobs – wings, money, bond issues – just because we’ve told Donald Tusk to bugger off?
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The stoking of fear, as a political tactic, has limits as well as inherent risks, similar to the proverbial little girl who cried wolf. It is for that reason that it is a very dangerous tactic, it makes identifying real threats all but impossible. From Cameron's pre-referendum implication that voting leave could lead to WWIII to suggestion of a shortage of medicines, the barrage of scaremongering has been relentless and hysterical. It is an unhealthy way to go about things.
Just for the lolz, the pictured A220 has P&W engines and is manufactured in Mirabel QC and Mobile AL - neither of which, I think, is in the EU.
To add to Quentin Vole's excellent point, there are reports that parts of the fuselage of the Canadian Bombardier plane (now rebranded as the Airbus A220) are made in China. In the past few decades, China has gone from being next to nothing in automobile manufacturing to the world's largest auto maker, and from next to nothing in shipbuilding to the world's largest ship-builder, and it is well known that China's next target is the aircraft industry. Much of Airbus's future market is expected to be in Asia, where China has certain marketing advantages, and there are reports (for whatever they are worth) that China's aircraft manufacturers will be able to undercut Airbus's price by as much as 40%.
That is the real challenge to those Welsh wing factories -- and to Airbus as a whole -- whether the UK is inside the EU or half-in/half-out under Boris's BRINO.