Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary never has exactly been the master of tact, but will his latest outburst make his customers finally ask themselves: do they really want to travel in his planes? Speaking at a Bloomberg event he asserted that Britain will one day rejoin the single market because ‘in the next five to ten years, quite a number of the Brexiteers will die, as the average age of them is about over 70’.
What O’Leary forgets is that people’s attitudes tend to change with age
Let’s leave aside, for a moment, whether it is wise to talk about your customers in this way; O’Leary’s remarks are wrong-headed. It is right that the proportion of people voting Brexit in 2016 rose with age. And, of course, humans being mortal, these voters will inevitably thin out. It is quite possible, too, that Britain will one day rejoin the single market or at least enter into a closer relationship with the EU than it has at the moment. Many of the figures who led the rancid Brexit negotiations have already left the political stage – the Boris Johnsons and Michel Barniers – and have been replaced with leaders who might be more apt to compromise. While many on the EU side felt they had to punish Britain for having the temerity to vote to leave, this urge will surely diminish with time.
Yet what O’Leary forgets is that people’s attitudes tend to change with age. The generation of septuagenarians which voted for Brexit in 2016 were in their thirties in 1975 when Britain voted – by two-thirds to one-third – to stay in the EU. They changed their minds about Europe when they began to feel that the reality failed to live up to the promise – and perhaps their priorities changed too. While in their youth they might have been enticed by the thought of living and working abroad, trying continental food and drink etc, by the time they reached their 70s they were more concerned with migration and the effect it was having on their communities.
Today’s younger generations are unlikely to be fundamentally different. As they age and settle down, they will be less interested in taking a summer job in a bar in Ibiza and more interested in the quality of life in their own neighbourhood – which may mean adopting a harsher attitude towards freedom of movement. It is far from clear, therefore, that because young people tend to be more pro-EU now, they will always be so.
O’Leary’s latest remarks do, however, raise one of the great conundrums of our age: why hasn’t Ryanair and its boss gone the way of Ratners? Gerald Ratner famously built up a fabulously successful chain of budget-priced jewellers only to destroy his empire in a single speech in 1991 when he described one of his products as ‘total crap’. His customers walked away and the name Ratner quickly disappeared from the High Street. For years, Michael O’Leary has been insulting his passengers in a similar way, yet Ryanair never seems to suffer for it. On the contrary, the airline has grown and grown as passengers put his remarks – and their comfort – aside and enjoy cheap flights. I honestly don’t know the answer to this question, other than to say that many a time I have sworn never to fly Ryanair again – yet when the time comes to book a holiday, it always seems to be Ryanair, annoyingly, that has the right flight at the right price.
Comments