An evening at Chevening

How have British business leaders’ overtures to the UK Government worked out?  Eoin O’Shea takes a look. 

Chevening, in Kent, is the official country residence of the three UK Brexit Ministers. Last Friday week, Chevening played host to a group of over 30 British business leaders hoping to persuade the UK Government to alter the UK’s position on a hard Brexit.

If one enunciates the phrase “an evening at Chevening” quickly enough, it can sound like “an evening achieving”. According to the reports of the meeting, however, far from that occurred. The Financial Times reported (with, perhaps, an air of the Englishman’s famed reputation for the understatement) that the meeting was marked by a “degree of grumpiness”. 

The business leaders present at Chevening were hoping, according to the testimony generally given to the House of Lords by the same business leaders, and prior to that body’s publication of its Brexit: Trade in Goods report in March 2017, that the UK would stay in the EU customs union and the EU single market post-Brexit. Both of these aims were dashed (once again) at the meeting at Chevening. According to reports, Brexit Secretary, David Davis, informed those present that it would not be politically possible for the UK to remain institutionally associated with the EU nor for there to be a transition period during which the UK would remain in the EU customs union after March 2019. So there. No single market, no customs union, and no time to get used to not being in either, potentially. 

So what is Britain’s business to do? The UK’s main industry bodies have asked, publicly and emphatically, that the UK should stay in the EU single market and the EU customs union after Brexit. The same trade bodies have also asked in the alternative (perhaps as a proxy for the initial arguments, given that their initial arguments seem to have fallen upon stony ground) that there should be a long transition period between the current position UK business finds itself in, and the final position after negotiations with the EU have concluded. But it is the case, if the evening at Chevening is anything to go by, that the UK business bodies’ requirements and requests have been rebuffed by the UK’s lead Brexit negotiator.

On 13 July 2017, a London Evening Standard columnist reported that the crankshaft of the Mini car “crosses the English channel three times while the car is being made”, indicating starkly (it is posited) the difficulty that the UK automotive industry will face once outside the EU customs union because each time a car part crosses the English channel, there will be customs procedures to be adhered to. The said article went on to state that being outside the EU customs union will mean that “this business arrangement becomes totally uneconomic if we do not continue to have free trade but instead have to pay the common EU tariff of 10%”. Being absent from the EU customs union, according to the said learned columnist, has “the potential to destroy the profitability of the British car industry”. The British car industry, according to the UK’s House of Lords report on goods published in March 2017, employs some 645,000 people – a larger number than are employed in the UK’s financial services industry.

It is possible, in the same line as the UK car industry’s declared woes, to instance troubles anticipated by Britain’s other main industries e.g. food and drink, aerospace etc. Who is listening to Britain’s industry?  If the evening at Chevening is anything to go by, they can go and whistle. 

Eoin O’Shea FCA is a practising barrister at law, specialising in commercial and tax law. He is a former member of the European Court of Auditors.