Brexit: Airbus boss calls government ‘disgrace’ as he threatens to quit UK, putting 14,000 jobs at risk

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The head of plane giant Airbus has branded Theresa May’s handling of Brexit a “disgrace” and ramped up a threat to close its plants if the UK crashes out of the EU with no deal.

Tom Enders, the company’s chief executive, urged Britons to ignore “Brexiteers’ madness” that it was too well-established to pull out of the country altogether.

“It is a disgrace that, more than two years after the result of the 2016 referendum, businesses are still unable to plan properly for the future,” Mr Enders said.

“We, along with many of our peers, have repeatedly called for clarity, but we still have no idea what is really going on here.”

And he added: “Please don’t listen to the Brexiteers’ madness which asserts that ‘because we have huge plants here we will not move and we will always be here’. They are wrong.”

Airbus employs 14,000 people in Britain, including 6,000 jobs at its main wings factory at Broughton, in North Wales, and 3,000 at Filton, near Bristol, where wings are designed and supported.

With around 110,000 more jobs in connected supply chains, the aerospace group is among the UK’s key employers – and among the most vulnerable to the loss of ‘just-in-time’ manufacturing across the EU.

Mr Enders said Britain’s multibillion-pound aerospace sector, a world-leader for a century, is “standing at a precipice”, with only nine weeks until the intended departure date from the EU.

“In a global economy, the UK no longer has the capability to go it alone. Major aerospace projects are multinational affairs,” Mr Enders said in a video message.

He added: “Brexit is threatening to destroy a century of development based on education, research and human capital.

“If there’s a no-deal Brexit, we at Airbus will have to make potentially very harmful decisions for the UK.”

Owen Smith, a Labour supporter of the anti-Brexit Best for Britain group, said of the warning: “The damage caused by Brexit won’t fly with big businesses like Airbus, and certainly won’t fly with the British people. Jobs and livelihoods are at risk.

“If companies like Airbus, or GE Aviation in my own patch, disinvest in Britain as a consequence of our leaving the EU, the Brexiteers in Parliament should never be forgiven.”

The warning comes after the Netherlands revealed that more than 250 companies are in contact about moving to the country because of Brexit.

The trade and investment arm of the Dutch government has been soliciting moves from companies worried about access to the EU market, with Britain set to leave the single market and customs union.

A number of high-profile companies have already announced a decision to cross the North Sea, including Japanese electronics giants Sony and Panasonic.