Sir Richard Branson has offered his Caribbean home, Necker Island, as collateral for the loan he is seeking to secure a commercial loan of “roughly £500m” to help his ailing Virgin Atlantic airline.
Many have argued that the UK taxpayer shouldn’t fund the multi-billionaire ex-pat. But that is missing the point.
The damage that the failure of this airline’s failure would cause to UK economy would be catastrophic. Not only would it harm everyone who flies by removing the competition, and therefore lower pricing, Virgin’s challenge to British Airways provide, it would also damage the supply chain.
Businesses as diverse as Rolls-Royce and the Manchester Airport Group have already spoken out on the damage the failure would cause.
And there is a broader issue here, UK business will not return to the previous normal swiftly. There will be a significant number of businesses that unfortunately, don’t make it to the other side of this lockdown. And for each that fails, there will be a number of other businesses severely impacted.
At a time when the government is investing unprecedented sums in supporting business to minimise these post-pandemic issues surely it would be folly to allow such a cornerstone of the economy to fail?
This goes far beyond your personal views on Sir Richard and will impact every single one of us.
