Thread by @t0nyyates

Rarely a week goes by when I don't wonder at how weak and diffuse the pro business pro markets Tory voice has become. Compare that to the concerted pressure and debate from the currently unseated left in the Labour Party.

Where are those pushing for free trade with Europe? Arguing against levelling up and invasive industrial policy? Reducing bureacracy and regulatory barriers at our EU border? Many of the individuals have nothing more to lose, yet seem to have given up.

In the late C19th early C20th when labour felt that no Parliamentary group adequately represented its interests, sufficient pressure built up to organise one that would, the 'Labour Party'.

The current Tory Party has been operating against business interests in the most extraordinary way, so far with no response from those interests.

This antagonism has taken many forms:

by generating maximal business uncertainty around how Brexit would be concluded, prepared to threaten No Deal.

obvs by erecting high barriers to doing business with the EU, after decades of UK supply chains merging into and adapting to the Single Market.

by corroding the institutional quality of the UK with repeated departures from truth telling about goverment plans, Brexit or the consequences of it, which, aside from the moral and political abhorrence, is bad for business.

by ending free movement of labour, of course; by ending the single market in the UK; pursuit of a hard Brexit against the wishes of Scotland, creating uncertainty about the status of the border between England and Scotland, and the Scottish monetary and fiscal order.

by the regime of apparent cronyism in awarding government contracts; penalizing companies critical of govt [eg Deloittes]

As @CJFDillow points out in a reply it's possible that the Tory Party were never sincere in their adoption of business interests. But that still leaves the q why those interests do not produce voices / pressure / an organization that forcefully articulates them.

A story during the indyref, and EUref was that business felt that its interests were in appearing to stay out of politics, for fear of provoking culturally based boycotts of their brands and products. Is that the explanation for the continued silence and weakness?

Is the story instead about the failure of UK capitalism to properly align the interests of managers and shareholders? So controllers express their own cultural preferences for nationalism at shareholders' expense?

Of course there are business organzations, like CBI and IoD, but either 1) they were directed by members not to articulate where business interests lie [seems to me the case] or 2) completely failed to articulate those interests despite being pressed?

Is this a 'collective action' problem? So businesses individually [apart from those run against profit lines by those with a taste for nationalism, like Dyson/Martin] recognizes where its interests lie but fear speaking out alone?

...Which I should have tweeted before the CBI/IoD tweet as this returns us to the q of why organizations there to press interests collectively to resolve those problems have not in fact resolved them.

Another explanation might be that business has this in hand, and has its eyes on the longer term. This is a short run, harmful, nativist blip, which the gravitational forces of capitalism will squash eventually.