What Brexit Means For British Businesses

Britain is in crisis. We are leaving the European Union (EU), Prime Minister David Cameron is resigning, the opposition Labour Party is trying to eject its leader Jeremy Corbyn, Scotland wants another Referendum and equities and the pound have plunged.

It’s been broadly reported that entrepreneurs – and business leaders in general – didn’t want this. I don’t doubt that the owners of tech companies and larger businesses were in favor of staying, but we ran a poll of entrepreneurs prior to yesterday’s vote which found that 41 per cent wanted to leave (48 per cent of entrepreneurs were in favor of staying). That was perhaps a clue that things were going to be closer than the betting markets anticipated. But pretty much everyone still assumed we would be staying in.

We are at a fork in the road. The Leave campaign didn’t cover itself in glory, with a fair amount of the campaign focused on talking down immigration. However, whatever the views of the public, a recent YouGov survey we undertook of Members of Parliament (MPs) with Bircham Dyson Bell (BDB) found that politicians in the House of Commons are quite a lot more liberal on this matter than the campaign suggested. Our survey found that the second most popular policy direction across the House of Commons is to make it easier for entrepreneurs to move to the UK – 82 per cent positive and just 3 per cent negative. This breaks down as 86 per cent of Conservative MPs positive and 84 per cent of Labour MPs positive.

In addition, 63 per cent of MPs think making it easier to hire skilled workers from abroad would have a positive impact on entrepreneurial activity in the UK. This is up from 49 per cent in 2014, with Conservative MPs’ support rising from 40 per cent to 58 per cent and Labour MPs’ support rising from 53 per cent to 66 per cent.

This liberal approach is reflected in the words of former Mayor of London Boris Johnson – the favorite to be the next Prime Minister – following the shock result:

“To those who may be anxious, whether at home or abroad, this does not mean that the United Kingdom will be in any way less united, nor indeed does it mean that it will be any less European… that this decision involves pulling up a drawbridge or some sort of isolationism – I think the opposite is true. We cannot turn our backs on Europe. We are part of Europe.”

Britain needs to stay open to Europe and that’s why the country should now rally behindan option that keeps us in the European Economic Area (EEA). The success of British based entrepreneurs – and as a consequence the country as a whole – will be contingent on access to the Single Market, low tariffs and the free movement of people.

There won’t be any changes until Article 50 is triggered, but business owners will already be thinking about what this means for them. Regarding immigration, Mishcon de Reya suggests employers should encourage eligible EEA employees who have been in the UK for fiver years to apply for permanent residence, and also that employers might consider applying for a Tier 2 sponsor license if they don’t already have one.

Entrepreneurs are everywhere, but they flourish in a secure and stable environment. The British people are fatigued with talk of Brexit but politics and policy will reference little else for months – if not years. The coming years are going to require hard graft from everyone to reestablish Britain’s place in the world. Let’s hope we get the leaders we need, as opposed to the ones – given the rhetoric of the Leave campaign – we probably deserve.

Source:Forbes.com