Barriers to business require urgent action from government
Per the business secretary, Britain’s trade problem is that we don’t think we can. Apparently our ‘sardonic’ sense of humour holds us back from sailing the seven seas like mercantile Brits of old.
Even by the standards of recent years, it’s an absurd statement. It sums up a wider dereliction of duty in Westminster towards British business; one that ranges from asking HR departments to check immigration status to calling on pension funds to take more risks on UK investments at the exact same time that they dawdle on changing regulations to allow it, instead pushing them towards long-dated bonds.
With the CBI now (in theory) free to be the voice of business once more, they could perhaps relaunch their lobbying campaign by projecting a sign on Parliament which simply reads “it’s not the private sector’s fault.”
Rather than hectoring, the government could act. The idea that exporting goods to Europe is as easy today as it was in 2016 is for the birds; there are benefits of Brexit, but a simpler export system is blindingly obviously not one.
Rishi Sunak’s efforts to make life easier through the Windsor Declaration have helped, but life remains difficult.
The business secretary would do better to acknowledge the real barriers that exist rather than pinning the blame on business leaders fed up to the back teeth with additional bureaucracy.
Indeed a little less conversation and a little more action would be welcome in all manner of areas, not least actually unleashing those benefits of Brexit. We await with bated breath.