Ryanair boss blames ‘car crash’ economic crisis on Brexit ‘failure’
Michael O’Leary hopes the appointing of Jeremy Hunt will lead to more ‘sensible’ policies
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The chief executive of Ryanair has branded Britain’s economic crisis post-Brexit as a “car crash” following the government’s U-turn on its economic plan.
Airline boss Michael O’Leary said today at a news conference in Rome: “The mini budget was a kind of spectacular failure of the whole concept of Brexit.” He added that he believes Prime Minister Liz Truss will only last a few more weeks in power.
He claimed that Truss, who is openly pro-Brexit and supported Britain leaving the EU during the 2016 referendum, will lose the trust of Conservative party members who voted for her, Reuters reports.
O’Leary said: “She got elected by appealing to all the Brexiteers for the last three months and it is the ultimate, I think, failure of Brexit and the Brexiteers.”
Truss was forced to reverse the government’s mini-Budget this week, after sacking chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng on Friday 14 October. O’Leary said of the event: “The mini budget has been reversed. So she’s in office but not in power.”
Kwarteng was replaced by Jeremy Hunt, which O’Leary said he welcomed in the current crisis. “The Remainers are coming back,” he said, “the adults are taking charge again ... we will return to some sensible economic policies.”
This is not the first time O’Leary has spoken out against Brexit. Earlier this year, he was quizzed on the summer of disruption in UK airports, which he said was “completely to do with” the fallout from the 2016 referendum.
He slammed Brexit as an “abject failure”, which led to widespread labour shortages in the aviation industry. O’Leary said: “We are hide-bound and hamstrung by a government so desperate to show Brexit has been a success, when it’s been an abject failure. It won’t allow us to bring in EU workers to do these jobs.”
“A lot of these pinch points would be solved very quickly if we could bring in European workers,” he added.
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