The Dyson lay-offs should ring alarm bells for Labour

No sooner does Labour take power than Dyson announces the shedding of 1,000 jobs one-third of its UK workforce. At least the premises and staff did not feature in the election campaign, selected by one of the main parties for a photo opportunity and a speech all about political brilliance. The battered, shocked employees were spared that.

- CHRIS BLACKHURST

The job losses had been in the pipeline for a while – you don’t just announce something like that as some sort of reflex action following an election result. Dyson had concluded a worldwide review, and this was part of the outcome. While the founder, Sir James Dyson, was a prominent Brexiteer, he was no friend of Rishi Sunak’s administration, criticising its approach to economic growth and science. The cuts were not caused by Brexit, either. They are to do with Dyson itself.

On its face, the company is performing brilliantly, with sales reaching a record £7.1bn last year and operating profits also close to an all-time high of £1.4bn. But growth is slowing, not accelerating. Revenues trebled between 2015 and 2019; after that they rose steadily, increasing by a third over the next four years. That’s been accompanied by a surge in R&D costs, up by 40 per cent last year alone.