Amazon’s manager in the United Kingdom is reportedly planning for “civil unrest” within two weeks of a ‘No Deal’ Brexit.
Doug Gurr is said to have claimed that the doomsday scenario formed part of the American online retail giant’s contingency planning at a meeting with Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union Dominic Raab and a number of business leaders.
“People seem to feel marginally more positive than when they went in [to the meeting]” said one of the participants to The Times, who suggested Raab had a “lot more grip” than predecessor David Davis.
“Let’s hope so, given that one of the people there with a significant supply chain had civil unrest within two weeks in their no-deal planning,” the source added.
Raab, a Brexit supporter close to Environment Secretary Michael Gove, is still new to the Brexit Department, with Davis having resigned from the post and his position as nominal lead Brexit negotiator in protest against Prime Minister Theresa May’s ultra-soft Chequers exit plan.
Davis was soon followed by junior Brexit minister Steve Baker, who revealed that the entire Brexit Department is something of a “Potemkin structure” — with the Brexit negotiations really controlled by the Remain-supporting Prime Minister and bureaucrat Olly Robbins.
An Amazon spokesman would neither confirm nor deny the lurid claims, but explained that, “Like any business, we consider a wide range of scenarios in planning discussions so that we’re prepared to continue serving customers and small businesses who count on Amazon, even if those scenarios are very unlikely.”
He added: “This is not specific to any one issue — it’s the way we plan for any number of issues around the world.”
The claims follow EU loyalist and former Attorney-General for England and Wales Dominic Grieve QC, who has positioned himself as de facto leader of a group of anti-Brexit rebels within the Tory parliamentary party, claiming that a ‘No Deal’ Brexit would be “absolutely catastrophic” and plunge the country into a “state of emergency” on Sunday.
The lawyer, criticised for ties to businesses allegedly linked to Zimbabwean tyrant Robert Mugabe during his time in office, claimed Britain would struggle to import food or medicines, and that flights to Europe would cease.
The suggestions are rather at odds by Remainers’ pre-referendum claims that the EU was a kind of free trade area which intrudes only minimally on Britain’s sovereignty — and do not appear to square with the fact that a large amount of international trade and travel goes on between EU members and non-members without issue.
Some business leaders, including entrepreneur Sir James Dyson, take precisely the opposite position to Amazon’s Doug Gurr, suggesting a ‘No Deal’ Brexit would actually be optimal, as it will provide for maximum freedom of action on the world stage with minimal continuing obligations to Brussels.
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