Business craves certainty – what it’s getting is the opposite

My lunch companion said how strange it was. His firm had its base in central London, there was a one-year break clause so they took it – in the expectation they could find new premises, cheaper, nearby. Instead, they were now homeless, there were no suitable offices anywhere and he rattled off a list of areas in the middle of the capital they’d been scouring.

We both agreed it was odd. The media is full of stories of organisations apparently scaling down and telling their employees they can WFH, for at least part of the week. You would suppose, then, there would be entire buildings going begging. Not a bit of it, he said. Firms were holding back, there was so much uncertainty around; everyone was playing a waiting game.

Ah, uncertainty. We both agreed we’d never known a period like it, that business does not know which way to turn.

There is the pandemic which, despite the vaccine rollout, shows little sign of ending. Businesses were looking forward to the jab dividend, but now they’re faced with employees being pinged and required to remain at home, despite having had two doses. Some sectors are to be excluded, but not all.

Schoolchildren are now on holiday, but once September comes, the chaos surrounding schools and their responses to Covid will return, unless something changes. Staff with children of school age will have to make provision for their care as entire year cohorts are ordered into self-isolation.

The virus, we keep being informed, will alter how we go about our lives, but how? No one knows. One moment people are being instructed to WFH, then the government is trying to get them to commute again. In London, the mayor, having been promoting cycling and walking to work, is trying to persuade commuters to use the Tube. Meanwhile, many of them have discovered the joys of not making the daily travel grind at all and being able to function just as easily from a spare room or converted garden shed.

Forces that were in place pre-outbreak have moved up a gear. The online economy has taken over, the decline of the high street has accelerated. No one is sure how that will end. So far, there has been no concerted action from the government. Bricks and mortar shopkeepers are still having to pay business rates. We await a plan as to how our town centres and shopping districts will be steered to recovery, but none is forthcoming. Councils seem intent on pedestrianising their main retail streets and inserting cycle lanes, without any thought as to how car drivers will fare, and minus any accompanying boost to public transport.

There is talk of turning over empty stores to cheap apartments or yet more shared workplaces, or as was highlighted this week, leisure centres. Really? That’s all it is. Talk.

We also have a government that is committed to “levelling up” but as was apparent from the prime minister’s uninspiring recent speech it is far away from supplying any concrete detail as to what that really means. Businesses don’t know where to go – head north in the hope of cashing in on some publicly subsidised investment boom or remain in the south, where prosperity resides? Until puffs of white smoke begin to emerge in Whitehall they will sit on decisions regarding the allocation of resources. The result is that nothing is moving.

I’ve not mentioned the B word. In the midst of grappling with the biggest health crisis in more than a century, the impact of Brexit has not exactly been headline news. In ordinary times, we would be treated to the shock of losing, according to a study by the Centre for European Reform, some £18bn in trade already. Leaving the EU has led to more red tape, not less. Businesses complain of too many forms to fill; goods are simply not getting through. They point to low stock levels of products from the EU. To diminished staffing as well – those EU workers they so relied upon, who were more diligent and committed than the Brits, have headed over the Channel.

They despair at the absence of skills among British school leavers. Employers have been making this same charge for years and yet there has been no positive reaction from the centre. Again, there is no plan, nothing for business chiefs to latch on to, confident this problem will soon be resolved. Rather, they’re ignored, so uncertainty prevails.

Those trade deals, signed to great fanfare, are laughable in the positive difference they will bring. Australia gets to send its meat here and hit our farmers. Oh, and its swimming costumes as well. What products does Japan want from us? Tea, biscuits and jam. Just like its tourists, now notably absent with no sign of their return.

We will need hundreds of these agreements to replace the revenue wiped out by exiting the EU. The business community knows this, which is why it was so determinedly Remain, but its views were ignored. In the City, there’s a sense of abandonment as confusion reigns over the application of Brexit to financial services. The government appears not to want to know – this, from a Conservative one at that. And there’s Northern Ireland, yet to be resolved. We’ve thrown away membership of a giant free trade bloc on our doorstep in exchange for a nebulous concept called “taking back control”.

We did this with the onset of great nervousness, brought about by the growing global dominance of China and the advent of AI. Just when we should have been shoring up our defences, we threw them away.

Business is crying out for leadership, to be heard, for a government to take its interests seriously. There is none. Worse, it feels as though it’s regarded as a target, fair game for tax hikes.

Businesspeople look at their own organisations such as the CBI; they want them to go in to bat on their behalf; to tell the government what’s what. Nothing. The CBI is imploring its members to “seize the moment”. As if.

The result of all this is hesitation and dismay. Business craves certainty; all it’s getting is uncertainty. As we said, we’ve known nothing like it.