Adam Marshall, the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), launched a furious blast at the “those in Westminster” today over the current political turmoil.
In his keynote speech to the BCC's annual conference at the Queen Elizabeth Centre, within a hop skip and jump of the House of Commons, Marshall said: “We are frustrated. We are angry. You have let British business down.”
And there was more: “You have focussed on soundbites, not substance. Tactics, not strategy. Politics, not prosperity. Listening without hearing.
“And as a result businesses and communities in every part of the UK are still unsure about when the future starts – let alone what it holds.”
He went on to single out a no deal Brexit - which he referred to as a “messy and disorderly” Brexit - by saying it would “not just be deeply irresponsibles. - it would be a flagrant dereliction of duty”.
And he demanded MPs “stop chasing rainbows”.
The anger was raw. And his attack on no deal was well made. It remains a very real threat to Britain, one that is being held over it by a Conservative Party that has closed its ears to its natural allies and pursued its current course purely to satisfy its own bizarre ideological cravings and those of the baying mob in the Tory ecosystem.
Marshall did not make his blast party political. But he might just as well have. The mess Britain is in, the uncertainty that dogs his members, was made in the Conservative Party. It was inflicted on the country by the Conservative Party. The no deal Marshall fears is advocated purely by a section of the Conservative Party, and has been kept alive by the worst Prime Minister in British history purely to appease it.
Theresa May has put the interests of the Conservative Party ahead of those of the nation and its business community at every step of this depressing process.
Even her dismal deal, should she find a way of ramming it through, will not end the uncertainty. Yes there will be a two-year transition, and thus the creation of some breathing space. But it’s just the starting point for a negotiation which some of the ultras still hope will end up with an inward looking UK sailing off into the Atlantic.
Michael Gove, supposedly a moderate Brexiteer and a favoured candidate to replace May, has made plain his view that the UK could seek to alter whatever agreements it enters in to.
The rest of the Westminster, meanwhile, the vast majority of MPs from all the other parties of whatever hue, are fiercely opposed to no-deal madness. Their ideas range from a much softer Brexit to the best option of all: a final say vote on whatever deal emerges.
We might be in a better place had Labour mounted a more effective opposition, and not chased the occasional rainbow of its own. But its sins pale by comparison to those of the governing party, the sensible wing of which has, until recently, too easily surrendered to the extremists.
Still, you can forgive Marshall's, and his members', reluctance to engage in party politics. They are, after all, in business. And they want to focus on doing business. It isn't hard to sympathise with the frustration, indeed the fear, that prompted Marshall to speak to speak as he did. He and his members are far from alone in feeling it.
