Bosses taking Reform seriously, says industry titan John Neill

As one of the UK’s most respected industrialists, John Neill has seen it all over the past 50 years. The former boss of Unipart retired last year having built the manufacturer up from the remains of British Leyland, the car-maker brought low by industrial strife in the 1970s.

He steered the business through every shade of politics: Thatcherism’s shock therapy; New Labour; the Coalition years; and the turmoil unleashed by the Brexit vote.

Now, watching from outside the boardroom for the first time in half a century, he is transfixed by the rise of Reform UK.

‘There’s an inevitability about the growth in the popularity of the party,’ says the 78-year-old.

Business leaders in his peer group, he believes, take Nigel Farage ‘very seriously’.

‘Reform is saying some things that are right, such as the need to get control of our spending. These things resonate across the social spectrum. A number of businesspeople are starting to say: ‘At least these guys understand we’ve got to sort the national balance sheet out.’

Reform, he says, has ‘a reasonable prospect of getting elected’ if it can attract significant funding and experienced defectors from the Conservatives.

Indeed, last week businessman Christopher Harborne, a former Tory donor, handed Nigel Farage’s party £9 million – the largest single donation to any UK party from a living person in British history.

Reform’s rise, in Neill’s view, is driven by disillusionment with the main parties. Neill was a vocal critic of Brexit, and when asked if he could ever support Reform personally, he pauses for a long time.

‘I’m pausing because it’s not an easy question. They were responsible for Brexit, and I’m not sure I forgive them for that,’ he says.

‘Unless there’s a radical change in the way this Government thinks about leading, inspiring and motivating the country, and getting us on to a fast-growth trajectory, it’s not going to get back into power.

‘Then the choice could well be Reform, unless the Conservatives re-establish themselves.’

There is another long pause: ‘I just don’t know the answer to your question right now.’

Does Reform have a serious economic policy, and the people to deliver it? Neill is prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt.

‘They say some very sensible things. If I were leading the party, I would bring in the best people I could find to work on a detailed, credible, deliverable plan – not slogans and soundbites, which is what Boris got away with.

‘I think they’ve got serious people talking to them. They may be in a much better place by the time of the election. You’ve got to have credible policies and then you need to execute them. One of the things I learned in business is that success is 5 per cent strategy and 95 per cent execution.’

Has Reform reached respectability for senior business types?

‘They’re getting there – partly by what they say and partly by default from everyone else.’

Neill has earned the right to be heard. When he stepped aside, just as this government began its chaotic tenure, Unipart had grown into a £1 billion firm, owned by its 12,000 staff and often cited as a model of enlightened capitalism.

Neill embedded a culture of continuous improvement called the Unipart Way encouraging staff, motivated by their stake in the firm, to problem-solve and generate ideas. It’s an approach, he says, the Government could adopt.

‘Philosophically, they’re in the wrong place. Everything they could do wrong they have.’

He cites VAT on private school fees – ‘turning aspiration into desperation’ – and applying inheritance tax to family farms.

‘Farmers want to invest for the long-term and create inter-generational wealth. What’s wrong with that?’ he asks.

His advice to ministers is: ‘Stop.’ He adds: ‘They need to stop and get themselves into an entrepreneurial mindset, rather than the Left-wing ecosystem they live in.’

In a world transformed by artificial intelligence (AI), he asks: ‘Are you in a Silicon Valley mindset, or in a bureaucratic state mindset?’

For Neill, the philosophy is simple: ‘A job is the best social programme. It gives you purpose, structure, discipline, relationships. It allows you to develop knowledge and be creative.’

Policies that increase the cost of hiring, such as higher National Insurance and minimum wage, only threaten those opportunities.

‘The man who cuts my hair told me he can only afford to employ three people instead of six. That’s happening all over the country. It would be great to pay people higher wages, but you need money.

‘We have to be in the real world, not the fantasy world Labour wants to live in. We’re in a brutal global market. To grow the economy and be competitive, there’s no…