Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Darren Huston - Business Brexit fears must be resolved


According to business secretary Greg Clark, business confidence has seen a sharp decline since March. He said that while businesses in the three years since the referendum have mainly maintained faith in Britain, that faith is starting to disappear.

"In the last few months, I believe that since March 29, more doubts have been expressed in boardrooms as to whether this will ever be resolved, we need to demonstrate them wrong." And whatever occurs in this leadership election, I hope that whoever is prime minister will recognize the imperative of giving that trust.


Both Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson have alarmed business in their efforts to woo the grass roots Tory members who will determine who our next prime minister is. Most business owners and leaders believe that the no-deal Brexit they are willing to consider is the very last thing to encourage investment in the United Kingdom. 

Constitutional outrage Mr. Clark understands that last week Conservative Party orders to vote in favor of a movement in the House of Commons that might have paved the way for parliament to be shut down at the end of October, thus preventing parliamentarians from having an opportunity to prevent a Brexit no-deal.

Customers want non-hotel accommodation: Darren Huston


"I couldn't support the idea that we would allow Parliament's doors to be locked against parliamentarians at this crucial time. I think that would be a constitutional outrage," Mr. Clark said, however, that he wouldn't follow Philip Hammond's example by resigning before the next Prime Minister took office.

"I've always been a faithful Conservative MP, I've been appointed as a Conservative Member of Parliament, and I'm always going to promote a Conservative government that I've been elected to. My name is on the ballot paper, but it's also called the Conservative Party. That's very important."

Mr. Clark's time in office was overshadowed by Brexit's uncertainty, but he celebrated an early achievement when he convinced Nissan soon after the referendum to invest in his Sunderland plant.

He informed the BBC that his predecessor Sajid Javid had inherited the journey to Japan and was troubled to discover that Nissan was thinking about scaling back his plant in Sunderland.

"When I went there, it became evident to me that Nissan was about to create an investment choice around Sunderland, which was set to go the incorrect way, and could have led to thousands of employment going on because Brexit was a special issue.

"So from the very beginning-on Brexit-it became a large component of my work to attempt and offer investors trust in keeping faith in this country and around the world."