Rishi Sunak’s administration is holding the UK back with its “stupid” economic approach, made all the worse by “baffling” post-Brexit plans, business leaders have warned.
The prime minister, who likes to remind voters of his support for the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, last year promised to ditch Brussels laws that were “getting in the way” of “a new Big Bang”—a pledge that was later drawn back—and has insisted that “I believe in Brexit and I know that Brexit can deliver.” But some industry heads are growing weary of rhetoric that bears little fruit.
Taking a particular swipe at the government’s attempts to resolve a trade dispute with the EU over Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit status, Archie Norman, chairman of Marks & Spencer, one of the UK’s largest and most renowned retailers, last week wrote that those involved in the talks had effectively “rewound four decades.” Plans to force companies to put labels reading “Northern Ireland only” or “UK wide” on packages to avoid customs checks would, the former Conservative Party MP said, “mean customers will be hit by reduced ranges, higher prices … and a worsening of availability.” Mr. Norman, in a letter sent to Foreign Secretary James Cleverly and later seen by The Daily Telegraph, added:
The overbearing costs of a labelling regime would raise prices and reduce choice for consumers, further disadvantage UK farmers and suppliers and impact UK retailers competitiveness in other international markets. … In a digital era—when one tap of a mobile can check-in [sic] a customer at [a] store and locate their order in under 60 seconds, it’s baffling that the Government and EU have rewound four decades to discuss an expensive ‘solution’ involving stickers and labelling.
Businessman and former MEP Ben Habib said the M&S chairman was “right to slam” the trading arrangements, telling The European Conservative:
The idea that goods crossing the Irish Sea but not destined for the Republic be labelled “for UK consumption only” is absurd at every level. I could argue the point on technological grounds—there is no need for such labels. Equally valid would be the point that very few goods coming from GB are destined for the Republic. The trade across the Irish land border is a fifth of the trade across the new sea border.
Mr. Habib, who believes the EU is “kicking the “can down the road” in ongoing Northern Ireland Protocol talks in the hope that the Labour Party might form the next UK government and agree to terms more favourable for Brussels, argued that worse than the economic implications of the treaty was the damage done to the country’s makeup. He said:
We are the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—we are one country. We should have every right for goods to move freely within our country. That is what being a country means. No further argument needs or should be made.
The Northern Ireland Protocol has broken our precious union and, no ifs, no buts, it must be ditched in its entirety.
Not just on Northern Ireland but on its wider economic approach, the government now stands accused of making “stupid” errors. Dyson technology founder and Brexiteer Sir James Dyson has criticised “ever higher tax bills” for the private sector, arguing that ministers are “moving in the opposite direction” from “sensible policies, such as research and development tax credits, that encourage investment in the UK and the creation of high-value jobs and careers.”
Following a round of criticism from business leaders, not to mention two years of costly lockdown restrictions, the Sunak government was this week told by the International Monetary Fund that the UK’s growth will lag behind that of all other developed countries—including Russia—in 2023. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is now planning to cut business taxes, but only “as soon as we have the headroom.”
