Business

Britains pro-Brexit business voices are being drowned out

Saturday marks the second anniversary of the EU referendum, which I played a role in as chief executive of the Vote Leave campaign.

Last years anniversary was overshadowed by the fallout from the General Election, the most crucial turning point in the Brexit process to date.

This year, no one is in the mood for a celebration. There is an air of uncertainty, tinged with frustration. And the question people most frequently ask me has gone from “do you regret the red bus?” to “do you have any regrets?”.

Read more: Theresa May defiant as Brexit rebels fight on over bill

And I do.

My regret is a personal one. I regret closing down Business for Britain after the referendum.

I set up the organisation after David Camerons Bloomberg Speech, to represent business leaders who supported the Prime Ministers policy of renegotiation followed by a referendum, and subscribed to a policy of “Change, or Go”.

We supported staying in a reformed EU, but should the negotiations prove unsuccessful, we advocated a managed departure. And when it became apparent that change wasnt in the offing, we morphed into the Vote Leave campaign, to support Britains exit from the EU.

And yet, Business for Britain was about so much more than that. Like this newspaper, its supporters had a fundamentally positive view about Britains place in the world.

With the UKs history of international trade, its business-friendly environment, the nexus of research universities and scientists, its stellar legal system and professional services firms, its soft power, housing the worlds capital city and – yes – even the English language, from all these factors sprung an optimism that Britains best days were still to come.

Crucially, these factors gave Business for Britains supporters the confidence that the British economy was strong enough to take back control. And while the government has commendably gone out of its way to ensure that some of these voices are heard in Whitehall, they are sorely missed as a unified force in the media debate which creates the political weather.

These business leaders are still there, they havent lost faith in the British economy, their optimism about Brexit is undimmed – but they are no longer heard as one voice.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that Remain-supporting business leaders are any less patriotic, but there are two interesting distinctions between the groups.

The first is business size.

In the years running up to the referendum, I was constantly asked by broadcasters whether we could supply them “big names” for interview.

This was understandable, on the grounds that they wanted a company which viewers were familiar with. But Business for Britain generally drew its support from SMEs, rather than corporate behemoths.

Big businesses do not dominate the economy – SMEs do. The entrepreneurs put forward by the Leave side were actually more representative of the UK economy and, ironically, more trusted by viewers.

The Remain advocates might have thought they were in a stronger position by putting forward big-shots, but to the public – who distrusted corporate titans after the financial crisis – the views of local businessmen were more compelling.

The second distinction is structure. The business leaders on the Leave side tended to run companies that they had established themselves, were family owned, or were private – or a combination of the above.

Anthony Bamford, James Dyson and Jim Ratcliffe – of JCB, Dyson and Ineos respectively – all made important contributions to the debate on the Brexit side. And it is instructive to note that family-run businesses employ 12.2m workers, compared to the 2.6m employed by the UKs 2,000 PLCs.

This distinction is important because the boss of a FTSE company naturally has a shorter time horizon that an entrepreneur who has built up a private company.

The former worries about the next quarters results, the latter sees decades into the future. One frets about the turbulence created by the Brexit negotiations, the other pays greater attention to the long-term business environment.

Which brings us to the question of who the existing business groups represent. Many of the leaders represented by Business for Britain felt and continue to feel unloved and unwelcomed by the well-known business lobbies.

SMEs and private companies tend to have longer time horizons and be less risk-averse than many of the corporate leaders who dominate the airwaves and have the loudest voice in Whitehall.

Just as we have a plurality of political parties, we also need a plurality of business groups. There is currently a big, Business-for-Britain-sized hole in the conversation, which is now – I regret – unfilled.

Read more: Barnier: No access to EU police databases after Brexit

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CityAM

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