All the little Brexiters are fawning over this story. Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) is apparently investing in the UK “despite Brexit”. The part they conveniently play down is this:
There is also the benefit of a cheaper pound when producing products bound for foreign markets.
There’s the rub, you see. GSK already has several manufacturing sites in the UK, so it’s not as if it has chosen to come to the UK ahead of anywhere else. I used to work in this industry and I know how much it would cost to shift pharmaceutical production to another site, especially if it was one in another country – the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) would make it nigh on impossible, and it would raise regulatory issues for long-standing products that had hitherto been “overlooked”.
A decision like this, reportedly worth £275 million, is not something you scrape together in a few weeks – it’ll have been years in the planning. The only outwardly visible signs for the UK economy will be a few dozen extra jobs for high-flying graduates, and if GSK are even remotely similar to the outfit I used to work for, they’ll try and keep that to a minimum anyway in order to maximise the benefit to themselves. A large part of that £275 million will pay for the internal arseing about that will be required. Basically, GSK is investing in itself.
The majority of GSK’s UK-manufactured goods are exported, and the collapse of the GBP following Brexit means selling GBP products on a USD market is highly beneficial to whoever is doing it. As long as the UK doesn’t physically fall into the sea, and as long as the GBP remains weak, GSK will coin it.
Don’t get me wrong, GSK are not doing anything that any other company wouldn’t (hell, they even offered me a job once). But they’re not doing it to save the UK. It’s for the short- to medium term benefit of their shareholders.
Just as I suspected. The day after I wrote this, I see that the toilet paper version of the Daily Mail – another right-wing, pro-Brexit misinformation machine – is trumpeting that £275m is being invested “in Britain”. It isn’t. It’s being invested by GSK, in GSK. Britain will get a few dozen new jobs out of it.