Optimism amongst small and medium-sized manufacturing firms has fallen for the first time in over a year, according to the CBI’s latest quarterly survey published today.
Vince Cable, unsurprisingly, talked about the need for that exit from brexit referendum.
Small businesses in the manufacturing sector appear to be losing faith in the Government’s ability to negotiate a Brexit deal that serves their interests.
Lacking anything resembling a strategy, the Conservatives’ willingness to entertain the foolishness of no deal is killing business confidence by the day.
The promise that a weaker pound would boost manufacturing exports has largely failed to materialise; the same will almost certainly prove true of the Brexiteers’ claims that dozens of trade deals will be signed upon our departure.
The case continues to strengthen for offering the public a referendum on the final deal, with the option to remain in the EU.
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7 Comments
Even in the Labour Party some are beginning to come off the fence. Rather than leading, they move with the Brexit tide.
Vince, Don’t let them steal our thunder.
I actually laughed at the use of the word ‘thunder’. I must have blinked and missed it.
Unless the Lib Dems actually get some policies they are likely to drop below the 7% they sit on now. And if Vince Cable is the best they have, they may as well just pack it in.
Trade is largely a question of trust. Businesses and manufacturers seek partners they can establish long-term working relationships with. This is no longer the case with UK PLC. Now, the brexiters may believe that being outside the EU will mean that we can quickly move to establish new relationships. This is unlikely. You can lose your reputation very quickly as a potential partner and it takes a very long time to get it back. The challenge of increasing trade with markets 10,000 miles away while snubbing one which is 22 miles away is interesting and given the record of British companies in export markets I’m not very sanguine.
My business has worked with mainly UK food manufacturers for over 25 years helping them to sell their products around the rest of the EU (ie NOT export as I spent my career TO DATE trying to explain). Views from the coal face as it were over the last couple of weeks in Germany and France has been of large German customers going through their 2018 supplier lists and just deleting UK suppliers (too much uncertainty despite the current good prices) and France where I was last week at a British Embassy function no less to promote British companies and realising that major supermarket buyers are showing no mercy now in terms of pricing and compliance of UK products in termsof packaging, terms etc and the job for UK companies to be on the level playing field with others has got so much more difficult! Still OK in Spain but there again they do also have a few issues going on at the moment don’t they so maybe a bit more pragmatism as a result…? But for how long? And no easier for companies wanting to sell into the UK either..
I think that what is not to be forgotten that 37% of eligible voters only voted for Brexit.
However the Brexiteers are under the illusion they have a giant mandate to take us out. It like the Scottish Referendum a super vote of say 2/3 to make such dramatic changes. We have now seen near fascist pro Brexit groups pop up all over Facebook and elsewhere. Politicizing the poppy anti immigrant etc.
A sad case of first past the post being a most inaccurate version of democracy we must push this. I am sick of remainers and anti Scottish Independence voters being demonised as traitors.
Could I please be sent my login details have forgotten them. On a crashed computer.
Thnks, Ron Murray (Dunfermline Lib Dems)
there are plenty of reasons for small business owners to be losing confidence; uncertainty over suitable employees, export conditions depending on whether they do and if so where and cash flow if they import goods, components or just like an occasional foreign holiday.