So what exactly is the CBI doing for us?

Far from representing British industry, this Eu-funded body seems intent on undermining it

Why is the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) so intent on demanding that the Government ignore the clearly expressed will of the British people? After all, in the referendum campaign all the leaders of Remain made it clear that voting to Leave would mean we would exit the customs union and the single market. The public then voted overwhelmingly in the election for parties whose policy was to leave both.

I suppose I shouldn’t be so puzzled. When one reflects on the Eu-funded CBI’S record over the years, it seems to have got an enormous number of decisions wrong.

The predecessor to the CBI, the Federation of British Industries supported appeasement and in 1939, while attending a conference in Germany with the Reichgruppe on the day tanks rolled into Prague, simply released a statement that “political difficulties have nothing to do with industrialists”. Incredible.

After the war it supported the full nationalisation programme under the Labour government and, by the 1950s, was in favour of State Planning. In the 1960s, the CBI was for cosy tripartite industrial relations, backing the disastrous prices and incomes policies – which plunged the country into crisis – and abandoned small businesses to collapse under the twin weight of government regulation and union militancy.

Come 1980, the CBI wasn’t that enamoured of Mrs Thatcher. I am sure there are many readers of this paper who can recall Terence Beckett, the director of the CBI, angrily denouncing her economic reforms and promising her a bare-knuckle fight to stop the Conservative government’s plans. Yet it was precisely these monetary and union reforms that went on to set the conditions for an enormous revival of industry’s fortunes, through the 1980s and up to today.

The CBI even, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, opposed the successful Thatcher-reagan strategy of sanctions against the USSR.

By 1987, the CBI was back at it, with a call for the UK to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism that finally pushed the government into doing just that. The subsequent hike in interest rates to 15 per cent sent the economy into another crisis. It was also a disaster for home owners, who were plunged into negative equity – many abandoning their houses having lost vast sums of money. In 1999, oblivious of the chaos caused by its support for the failed ERM, the CBI mounted an aggressive campaign for Britain to join the euro, forecasting significant benefits to the UK economy.

Fortunately, thanks to the opposition of the Conservative Party, Tony Blair’s government stayed out of the euro, even though Blair was in favour of joining. I say fortunately because in 2009 recession hit all developed countries, including those in the eurozone. Despite the enormous problems in the UK economy, we were able to ride it out as sterling devalued. But the euro economies could not react and suffered terrible economic problems, long-term recession and debt.

The CBI was also a prominent player in Project Fear, claiming with the “better off in” campaign that we would face an enormous collapse of the economy if we voted to leave. How refreshing, then, to hear Jim O’neill, the former Treasury Minister and an ardent remainer, admit that the economy had done much better since the referendum than had been predicted and would continue to outperform forecasts.

Now the CBI’S final position is to claim that even as we leave the EU we should stay in the customs union, even though 90 per cent of global growth will come from outside the EU in the next 15 years. I see that this is also a reversal of its position in 2013, when it said that such a position would, “be the worst of halfway alternatives… leaving the UK with… zero influence over trade deals”.

You would have thought that of all things, knowing that the EU’S share of world trade is shrinking, the CBI would have seized this opportunity to represent British industry. Yet it made a mess of the opportunity, as usual. All in all it makes you wonder, what is the point of the CBI?

Iain Duncan Smith is MP for Chingford and Woodford Green