Murnaghan Paper Review with John Allan, Chair of London First and Tesco, 16.10.16

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Lots as ever to cover in the Sunday papers this morning.  I’m joined by the Chairman of the lobby group, London First, John Allan who is also the Chairman of Tesco and the house builder, Barratt’s.  Stacey Hillyard is a Republican commentator and the Chairman of American Voices International and Kirsty Brimelow QC is a leading human rights barrister, a very good morning to you all.  

[Story about Donald Trump]
JOHN ALLAN: I think there is a difference, one of them is experienced and qualified and probably fairly sensible, we don’t know, but the question I have is why anyone is standing by Trump.  I think he appals me as a man in terms of what he says about women, how he treats women, every bit as much as I’m sure many millions of women are equally appalled.  This man is standing not just to be the President of the United States but to be the leader of the free world with his finger on the nuclear button and frankly the prospect of him being elected terrifies me.

[Story about airport expansion]
JOHN ALLAN: I think this is fundamentally a good news story, although it is well hidden within the article.  I mean a decision should have been made on providing more airport capacity decades ago, successive governments have just kept kicking it into touch, we now appear to be reaching a point where there may be a decision although interestingly the Sunday Times implies it may be delayed for another week or two to avoid being contaminated with the Witney by-election but I think at last we are going to get something, particularly in the post-Brexit situation, we need the reality of having more capacity for more business travel, for more tourists coming here who are very important to the economy and also for freight.  It is often overlooked that about half of our freight and particularly high value freight travels by air.  

DM: You get those jars of Vegemite in from Australia.

JOHN ALLAN: Well I don't know if we’re looking at that or not, Dermot but the good news is they appear to be inching towards a decision and it’s worth remembering that once we get that decision it will probably be a decade before we have the additional capacity but nonetheless it will be extremely welcome.

[Story about Bob Dylan]
DM: Are you a Dylan man, John?

JOHN ALLAN: Absolutely, I mean as a writer, not so much as a performer, I think he has kind of lost it as a performer now but I agree with Stacey, those who are against this are really practising literary snobbery. I mean this person’s writing has had a profound influence over millions of people over decades so why shouldn’t he be considered for the Nobel Prize?

DM: A new category has opened up then, all those song writers out there might have to be revisited.

JOHN ALLAN: Well Leonard Cohen might be next.

[Story about
DM: John, you have got this story, very important, we heard from the Nissan Chief Executive, what was it, a couple of weeks ago, saying big concerns about Brexit and where they were going to site production of the next generation Qashqai and apparently Theresa May has offered them some kind of deal.  Do we know what it is?

JOHN ALLAN: Not really, the suggestion is here that it is support for driverless cars which clearly is going to be a very important technology going forward one they have established the legal issue of who is responsible for them when they crash but I think it’s good that we are going to try to get in front of some important coming technologies but I think what this story also exposes is that clearly there are going to be very profound implications for the British economy from Brexit and those of us who believe that we should be giving priority to getting the right economic deal in terms of Brexit, I think it is going to become clearer as we go forward that if we don’t there will be a big price to pay.

DM: And this summer Nissan were clearly talking about some form of compensation if we Brexit under World Trade Organisation rules and their industry faces tariffs.

JOHN ALLAN: Indeed and they are, I’m not sure of the numbers quoted in here, about 80% of what they produce is exported so they are prime exporters, they are hugely successful, they have a decision to make on where they are going to manufacture another model and it could be manufactured somewhere else.

DM: Thank you all very much indeed.