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A business minister today dared Theresa May to sack him in an extraordinary show of defiance over Brexit.

Richard Harrington said he would be “very happy” if the Prime Minister punished him for making public warnings about the threat to the UK of a no deal, a scenario the Government is refusing to rule out.

He spoke out as some of Britain’s most senior business leaders united with trade union bosses to warn against the “madness” of no deal.

Airbus chief executive Tom Enders branded the Government’s handling of Brexit a “disgrace” and warned that the aerospace giant could quit Britain.

Mr Harrington said he was “delighted” by Mr Enders raising the alarm over the risk to hundreds of thousands of jobs posed by the UK crashing out of the European Union in just nine weeks. “It is telling it like it is,” said Mr Harrington, a former businessman himself.

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Stressing no deal would be a “total disaster for the economy”, he added: “I am very happy to be public about it and very happy if the Prime Minister decides I am not the right person to do the business industry job.” His threat came as a growing number of MPs were swinging behind moves in Parliament to block no deal and to delay Brexit going ahead on March 29.

In a clear sign that boardroom patience with Mrs May’s tactics is running out, Mr Enders said: “It is a disgrace that, more than two years after the result of the 2016 referendum, businesses are still unable to plan properly for the future. We, along with many of our peers, have repeatedly called for clarity, but we still have no idea what is really going on here.”

European aerospace giant Airbus employs more than 14,000 people in the UK with about 110,000 more jobs connected to supply chains.

“If there’s a no-deal Brexit we at Airbus will have to make potentially very harmful decisions for the UK,” Mr Enders, who is German, added.

“Please don’t listen to the Brexiteers’ madness which asserts that ‘because we have huge plants here we will not move and we will always be here’. They are wrong.” Although factories would not close overnight, Airbus could be forced to “redirect” future investment for its long-term strategy to other countries, Mr Enders said.

Airbus’s UK operations, at 25 sites, generate about £6 billion of turnover annually, making it the country’s largest aerospace company, building components, including wings, for planes, helicopters and satellites.

Mr Enders stressed that Britain’s multi-billion-pound, world-leading aerospace sector is “standing at a precipice” with “Brexit threatening to destroy a century of development based on education, research and human capital”.

Former Tory Welsh Secretary and leading Brexiteer David Jones rebuffed the idea that the Broughton Airbus plant in north Wales could be scaled down or close. He said Mr Enders had “made threats such as this for some time”, and stressed a large proportion of the factory’s workers voted Leave.

Richard Harrington: the man behind the 'no deal' warnings Richard Harrington has been the Conservative MP for Watford since 2010, and was appointed as a Minister for Industry and Energy in 2017. He has been active in the Tory Party since 1983, and was chairman of the Conservative Friends of Israel until 2010. Mr Harrington won his marginal constituency from Labour by 1,425 in 2010, and was re-elected in 2015 with an 8.5 per cent increase in his share of the vote. In 2017, he was re-elected with a majority of just 2,092. He previously worked in the Department for Work and Pensions and sat on the Indternational Development Select Committee between 2010 and 2912. Before entering Parliament, he worked in business, including as assistant to the managing director of Waitrose. He also founded Harvington Properties, a property development company, in 1983, with two university friends.

However, Steve Turner, assistant general secretary of the Unite union, said: “No-deal Brexit fantasists should pay heed to this strongest warning yet from Airbus.”

Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay said he took the warning from the Airbus chief “very seriously”, adding that it highlighted the need for a deal.

A No 10 source said: “The Prime Minister is working hard to deliver the certainty that business needs. That’s why she is focused on getting the changes which are required to allow Parliament to support her deal.”

Whitehall insiders suggested Mr Enders’s comments were directed across the political spectrum, not just at the Government.

They threatened to overshadow attempts by Chancellor Philip Hammond to convince bosses, gathered at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss alpine resort of Davos, that post-Brexit Britain will still be a “great place to do business”.

He announced a £100 million fund to create 1,000 PhD places in the UK to develop the next generation of artificial intelligence including for use in life-saving medical technology, improve voice-recognition software and early warning systems for toxic air.

Other EU countries are targeting companies in the UK to lure them across the Channel or to Dublin.

French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said his government is talking to “many companies”.

The Dutch government is in talks with 250 firms to try to get them to move to the Netherlands.

Sony is shifting its European headquarters from Britain to Amsterdam to avoid Brexit disruption. Ferry operator P&O is re-registering its UK fleet under the flag of Cyprus so it can continue to use EU tax arrangements.

Poland’s prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki appealed to his countrymen to “come back” and join the country’s thriving economy.