Paul’s perspective – Brexit

April 6, 2016

Brexit means it promises to be an interesting run up to June.  Our Nation goes to the polls to take a supposedly critical decision on the future of our status within the EU, but are the stakes as high as the respective campaigns are leading us to believe? Will our ability to engage and trade with our European friends change overnight based on the way we vote?  I suspect not.

I have, for some while, been canvassing views from numerous entrepreneurs, business leaders, politicians, colleagues, family and friends.  Views on the likely outcome are probably best left to the bookies (you can currently get 2/1 on a leave vote), however, more importantly, I have been canvassing views on the implications for small and medium size businesses in the event that we move one way or the other.

For me, there appears unanimity on one point above everything.  We simply do not have the right level of information – yet – to take an informed decision so as to vote ‘in or out’.  Voters need FAR more information and analysis relating to how we will trade with our European allies (which they will inevitably remain irrespective of the outcome) and equally important matters such as jobs, access to European consumer goods, travel and healthcare which will provide colour on the true implications of leaving.  To me, it is for the ‘IN’ campaign to build this argument and it needs to come in time for an informed decision on 23 June.

To date, the ‘IN’ campaign appears focused on scaremongering and wild predictions of a jump into the abyss, without any substantive analysis.  There will be economic meltdown, a drastically weaker pound and a bunch of existing European partners who will, apparently (!) stop trading with us overnight. Mercedes will stop selling cars to us Brits? Lafarge will stop supplying us with cement? Yoplait yogurts will be no more for the kids? Really?

The ‘OUT’ campaign is seemingly focused around the positive results of tighter border control and an ability to wrestle back legislative control from Brussels.  There are positives in both those points, but again should we not have a better steer of a post-Brexit trade environment?

I have read a fair amount, debated with many and spoken a lot.  However, the arguments that I simply do not buy – because there is no analysis to support them yet – are the ‘scare stories’ built around a Brexit.  A leaflet through my front door only yesterday spoke of the 3 million UK jobs that are seriously at risk as a result of their relation to European exports. The £3bn of trade with EU members that would simply disappear overnight.  My message to both campaigns: more detail and analysis please!

At the heart of my argument for now, is the question of whether we really believe that the EU as a collective, or the individual sovereign states within it, will simply stop trading with the United Kingdom because we do not remain a member of their club? I simply do not buy that.  Europeans will continue to want to trade with the UK and we will continue to want to trade with them.  Who knows, a Brexit may even stimulate an even higher degree of M&A activity.

And so, at this point in time, given the positives that the ‘OUT’ campaign points to, and the lack of credibility and rational argument (so far) as to why the negatives of leaving will actually come to pass, I remain marginally of the view that a Brexit will be the right decision for the country.

However, I remain open to be empirically startled by the ‘IN’ campaign that there are genuine reasons to fear departure. If a good argument is built by the ‘IN’ campaign between now and 23 June, surely I, along with others, can be persuaded to professionally reflect and change our minds?

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