MPs have let down businesses.

In what has become the rather predictable style of BBC News, a headline on its web site today asks the somewhat provocative question, “How has business been affected by Brexit so far?”.   The implication in the article by Dharshini David, a BBC Economics correspondent, is that of negativity by business leaders to leaving the EU.   

Which when you think of it for more than a second is the wrong question for him to ask for one very obvious reason, we haven’t left the EU.  Brexit hasn’t happened.   

What is happening is not business leaders reacting to us leaving.  Most sensible business leaders accepted the will of the people and got on with getting their business ready for life outside the EU, the single market, the customs union, the rule of the ECJ over all they do and all the other things that make up the package countries would have to accept if they were to join the EU today.  Indeed, one business I know, within six month of the referendum, was ready to begin trading on the WTO rules.  He contacted his suppliers and customers and worked out what would happen if the EU didn’t come up with a deal as good as WTO, a deal free from ECJ control etc.  It was actually all relatively easy.   

Their frustration is not us leaving the EU.  What these business leaders who did the preparation can’t understand is why the government and the opposition parties have taken so long.  They believed that the peoples vote would be respected and prepared for that.  They are frustrated that MPs having asked the people to take the decision whether to leave are now effectively over turning it.  

In other words, sensible businesses that have prepared for leaving have done so on a false expectation.  They assumed that my word is my bond.  They assumed that triggering Article 50, an Act of Parliament, which explicitly states we leave on a particular date and move to an alternative to EU rules, was for real.   

However, it looks increasingly like their effort was a waste of time.   

What really sticks in their craw is that the very same MPs who voted to give the decision to the people and who triggered Article 50, are now undermining the whole thing.  In the real world they would be sued for breach of contract.