Brexit: business fears

21/05/2017

Pete, in his recent blogpost features the self-important Chris Grey, who happens to ask exactly the questions many of have been asking, and for some time.

For instance, he asks in respect of Brexit: where is the detailed discussion of different options and their consequences, to which he adds several more: What exactly does the government's White Paper Brexit plan, endorsed in the Tory manifesto, mean? Is "no deal better than a bad deal"? How would a "bad deal" be defined? What does a "no deal" scenario look like?

What Grey finds most extraordinary of all, though, is the lack of discussion on the costs of the Brexit plan. Every single other policy, from whatever party, is relentlessly scrutinised for affordability, he says, but not this one. "How will this or that spending pledge be paid for? ", he asks.

So obvious are such issues that similar thoughts have even occurred to Telegraph columnist Juliet Samuel. She notes – as others have done before her – that anyone hoping for a detailed picture of Brexit the Mrs May's manifesto will be disappointed. Our Prime Minister has stuck resolutely to her favoured strategy: reveal as little as possible and maintain maximum room for manoeuvre.

This leads Samuel to the equally obvious conclusion that it's impossible to know what the Brexit negotiations will bring. "The government", she writes, "is determined not to show its hand any sooner than it has to", adding: "If that leaves EU negotiators in the dark it also, unfortunately, leaves voters in the same place".

And much the same sentiments have occurred to Booker who, in this week's column also records that the Conservative manifesto told us nothing new about the Government's Brexit plans, other than repeating the promise of a "smooth, orderly" withdrawal.

Scarcely a day now goes by, he adds, without further signs of how difficult this may be to achieve, reinforced by Angela Merkel who told a G20 trade union conference last week that it would be up to the British to work for a settlement that would cause "the fewest possible distortions" to trade.

But it is not only the pundits who are reacting to the strange political vacuum represented by Mrs May's moribund manifesto. Last week also, as Booker records, there was a "startling report" from the international body representing all those firms whose products are dependent on components imported from other countries.

This was a survey of 2011 UK and European supply chain managers by the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS). It found that, thanks to our decision to leave the Single Market, almost half the European firms reliant on British suppliers are so fearful of the new "customs procedures and regulatory hurdles" this will bring that they are already arranging to source those products on the continent.

Of British firms reliant on parts imported from Europe, 32 percent are likewise looking for alternative suppliers in the UK (of all cars made in Britain only 41 percent of their components are currently sourced in the UK). As the institute's president put it, "the separation of Britain from Europe is well under way".

This, in its own way, constitutes a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister – one shared by many enterprises in the City of London, where international banks, such as JP Morgan, are quietly making preparations to move part of their operations to the continent.

But, says Booker, businesses have only been waking up to all these potential problems since January, when Theresa May announced the reversal of her earlier insistence that Britain would remain "within" the European market.

By choosing instead to leave the Single Market, Mrs May is opting to have the UK become what EU rules classify as "a third country". This status makes it inevitable that we are caught by all those new "customs procedures and regulatory hurdles" which so many businesses in Britain and Europe are now contemplating with such concern.

This is why we learnt last week from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of a warning from the council of advisers to Germany's economics ministry that there is "little chance of a sufficiently deep agreement being concluded by the planned exit date of 2019".

The only way to "minimise disruption", they say, would be for Britain to join Norway in the European Free Trade Area, an option which Mrs May has already ruled out.

And gradually, the consequences of that decision are coming clearer. In Ireland, for instance, the sharpest cry of alarm yet went up last week from its racing industry, worth £1 billion a year, which depends heavily on its freedom to move 200 horses a week to race in Britain and back again.

Its spokeswoman recalled that last year Cheltenham had 19 Irish-trained winners, along with a third of those at Royal Ascot. She fears that new controls requiring "valuable horses to remain in horse boxes for prolonged periods at border checkpoints" would, on welfare grounds alone, make it difficult for this to continue. But Britain, she said, had so far shown no sign of needing to address this problem at all.

Much of all this concern has only arisen, of course, because of the huge cloud of uncertainty over what Britain will actually be seeking when the talks begin in Brussels next month.

It is one thing to offer bland assurances that we are hoping for a "smooth, orderly" withdrawal. But for many the strain of waiting for the details on which their livelihoods depend is becoming hard to bear. More to the point, the potential damage from a "botched Brexit" is so great for some firms that they must take precautions in order to protect their operations.

Not all of this is necessarily bad. As this report indicates, the Swedish furniture retailer Ikea is considering making more products in the UK in order to help offset risks from importing goods.

That other companies are looking at this option is confirmed by CIPS and, depending on the volume of trade substitution, this type of arrangement could have a significant effect on offsetting export losses.

The thing here is that we have no way of knowing what the balance will be. This is the gift Mrs May has bestowed on the nation. Where there could have been clarity and purpose, we have confusion and uncertainty. Small wonder, business fears are increasing, as is the case with any sensible person trying to find a way forward.