Comment: Getting down to business in the EU debate

BRITAIN is not going to quit the European Union without the business lobby putting up a hell of a fight. That much was clear from the Confederation of British Industry’s annual conference.
Martin FlanaganMartin Flanagan
Martin Flanagan

Business was rattled by the Scottish independence referendum, though the corporate world only stuck its head above the parapet in the final fortnight of the debate, when it seemed that the vote north of the Border was on a knife-edge.

But the CBI and other employer ­organisations clearly think the stakes on EU membership are too high for the business world to adopt once more the previous rather mealy-mouthed approach of keeping their cards close to chests until late in the day. The early intervention is to be welcomed on an issue of momentous significance for Britain.

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CBI president Sir Mike Rake was pushing at an open door for most of his members yesterday when he said in his speech that the country was facing a stark choice between openness and isolation.

It is abundantly clear that the business lobby will argue strongly against quitting the single market and its gateway to prosperity and growth, even if membership comes bound up with Brussels directives and compromises national sovereignty.

Commerce – by both instinct and history – is outward-looking and profit-seeking rather than sclerotically introspective. That applies to Elizabethan ships crossing the ocean to the New World, the transporting of wool to Flanders in the 16th century and all the way up to supplying financial services to Belgian dentists today.

And it would be strange if the business world was not concerned about the spectre of withdrawing from a market of 500 million consumers that takes 40 per cent of our exports, and leaving a bloc which our membership of is often key to major foreign investment in the UK, being a springboard to mainland Europe.

As such, unlike in the independence referendum – which also threatened worrying, though relatively less cataclysmic, corporate repercussions – business is getting its hits in early ahead of David Cameron’s potential in/out EU referendum in 2017.

And it is not so much shots across the bows as a real attempt to put a cannonball in the rigging of Ukip, and any would-be Tory imitators.

We are likely to see a lot more of this – and from individual chairmen and chief executives of big firms, as well as trade bodies – if the Conservatives win a majority at next year’s general election, or can persuade the Liberal Democrats to enter a new coalition committed to a referendum.

However, as the CBI president candidly said yesterday, things are not straightforward. Rake admitted there is a “disconnect” on the issue of immigration from the EU between the experiences of businesses and the ­concerns of the wider public about the impact on housing, schools, GP services, social cohesion and so on.

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Ultimately, the result of any referendum may hinge on which most influences voters: the pretty transparent economic benefits for Britain of being in the EU club as opposed to the business uncertainty and diminished political influence of being on the outside; or visceral social concerns that deem a founding EU tenet of free movement labour across effectively borderless countries became a step too far when the European economic project became a political one.

This muddy overlap of political, business and social issues that makes the outcome so uncertain, I suspect, may well render many voters ambivalent on which way to vote.

Whether you agree with its stance or not, it is this uncertainty that has induced the likes of the CBI get its artillery in place early, and its intervention is a service to vigorous democracy.

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