No.25 – What Happened to the 'Party of Business?' !

Dear James, 

What a mess! Your party may be in a temporary lull in its civil war, but the path ahead is clear. The wagging Tory tail is about to throw the whole of our body politic and the nation it claims to represent into a totally unnecessary chasm. Our country is careering towards a massive upheaval which, even in the most optimistic analysis, will end up as a stagnant, low growth economy, a mere shadow of the ‘top of the growth league’ nation, that the UK abandoned in June 2016. 

It is already happening. In the real world beyond the Westminster madhouse, real businesses, real jobs and real people are facing the real consequences of Mrs May’s rabied determination to mollify the ERG. Today Nissan has confirmed that it is cancelling its plans to invest in its new X-Trail model in the North East. The UK car industry as a whole suffered a 46.5% drop in investment in 2018. That makes an 80% drop in the last three years. Last week Barclay’s Bank opened up a new Division in Ireland taking £160bn with it. The week before Airbus warned of factory closures and JLR announced future lay-offs. Other major companies are accelerating their plans to move capital and people out of the country as are 33% of small and medium sized businesses. The business community is voting with its feet James as Mrs May and your party leads us blindly towards the chasm. 

The vast majority of practical and realistic people in our country are appalled and will hold your party responsible for this massive failure of politics. The Tory Party, once the party of business, will probably split into a right wing rump centred on the north and a centralizing, modernizing wing somewhere in the centre. It cannot continue like this and, in my view, the sooner the split happens, the better. 

Mrs May is going back to Brussels this week to ‘Battle for Britain’. Her metaphor was no doubt inspired by the BBC’s gaffe last week in announcing her latest gambit while showing Spitfires flying in menacing formation towards the continent.  Are these the standards that we should expect from our politicians in the modern world? The lady is dishonestly playing the old game of post-imperial glory and, while it may work with some backward looking voters, it is only laughed at despairingly by those who wish to change and modernise our nation. 

In the coming days Parliament will no doubt go through even more contortions but with the same result. And even if Mrs May persuades the ERG to do a backflip and support her deal, the problem will not go away. Remainers will become Returners until our country sorts itself out. 

James, the quickest way to clear the air and avoid two or three more decades of sterile  wrangling, is very simple.

It is to ask the nation!

Kind regards, 

BH - Your Concerned Constituent