Firms are walking away as Tories play their silly games
This time last year, I chaired a discussion among business leaders about the impact of Brexit.
With the country still reeling from the result of the EU referendum, all we’d really been told at that point was “Brexit means Brexit”.
Since then we have had a snap election in which Theresa May lost her majority, he party becoming embroiled in a humiliating display of self-flagellation that would shame ferrets in a sack.
Stability, which is all business craves, now seems but a pipe dream.
Yes, Britain has entered formal negotiations to leave the EU but the scene remains staggeringly the same.
Brexit still just means Brexit, still without substance, some 16 months after the country voted for it.
Brexit Secretary David Davis attends summits without a single sheet of notes, while his colleagues can’t even agree what those notes should say.
Chancellor Philip Hammond is accused by his own side of coming “close to sabotage” with a refusal to spend millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money preparing for a no-deal with an EU which he now, apparently, refers to as the “enemy”.
And with every day that passes and a new self-inflicted Tory wound is exposed, hopes that next week’s summit of EU leaders could move us on from talking about the divorce and into dividing up the spoils fade. There is still no agreement on what we are asking for, yet there is a cavalier assumption that once we decide, the Europeans will simply form an orderly queue to hand it to us on a plate.
Meanwhile, business is leaving. Companies are reluctantly and quietly quitting the City of London; removing door plaques, talent, expertise and their cash, and the Government doesn’t seem to care a jot.
Financial institutions don’t want to leave the UK, but the UK has left them. This Tory Government is devoid of direction, policy or purpose, irrevocably divided by Brexit.
We have the absurdity of a Prime Minister and some of her most senior ministers attempting to deliver something they campaigned against because it would be bad for the country.
This is what they call democracy. And in Scotland, where the vote to Remain was overwhelming, that democratic deficit has never felt more pained.
Theresa May told us that politics was not a game, yet the Conservatives are approaching Brexit like some riotous version of a Victorian party parlour game.
No wonder our European partners look on bemused. They want us to get on with the job but see a fractured Government floundering around, manufacturing a grievance about a negotiation that they instigated, can’t control and now must pretend they can win.
Europe isn’t angry with us, it’s just disappointed.