CAN BORIS MAKE THE WRIGHT MOVE?
Among the growing pile of requests in his in-tray at 10 Downing Street, the new prime minister will surely have recognised elements of one from the North Antrim MP, Ian Paisley, asking Boris Johnson’s government to make an urgent ‘major intervention’ to help resolve the cashflow crisis that has caused Wrights Group — the second largest of the UK’s three remaining bus manufacturers — to seek a substantial outside investment to secure its future.
Paisley’s concern is understandable. Most of Wrights’ 1,400 employees are his constituents in a part of the UK where major industrial manufacturers have become thinner on the ground
The bus builder’s exponential growth over the past 30 years has turned it into the largest private sector employer in Ballymena, a home-grown enterprise that has helped maintain the economy of a community in which two global businesses, the Michelin tyre company and cigarette maker JTI Gallaher, have closed their plants in recent years with the loss of around 1,600 jobs
As a member of the party that provides Johnson’s Conservatives with the numbers of MPs to keep them in power, Paisley will hope that he has a greater chance of his calls reaching the pr…
