Guest column: Christian Spence – 100 days since Brexit, what has changed?

I’D PLANNED on it being an easy night. Stay up until the first few areas declared, set an alarm for about 4am just to confirm the result was everything we were expecting, and then back to bed. It didn’t work out like that.

After the first couple of results from the North East were announced, it was clear that we were looking at a very close result, and the financial markets rapidly feared the worst.

By the early hours of the Friday, the Asian markets were giving sterling a pounding and the result was clear: Britain had, by over a million votes, decided to leave the European Union.

100 days on, and what has changed?

Sterling remains low, with both its positive and negative effects firmly felt, and there’ll be more of them to come.

The prime minister, and most of the cabinet all changed (mercifully) quickly. But, in other areas, things remain all too similar.

Our legal position within the EU is unchanged, but so is our vision of what that position may be in the future. We still don’t know and I fear that we are, at best, months from knowing anymore.

Talk is now of “soft” or “hard” Brexit, with advocates of both sides not really knowing what they mean by those terms.

The quality of commentary from businesses, media, civil servants and politicians, in the main, only serves to highlight just how little knowledge the people of the UK have over international policy.

Key terms like single market, the difference between access to it and membership of it, the EU customs union and more all have low levels of comprehension, making the current debate even harder than it already is.

So, where do we go from here?

The economy is slowing (though it already was), and investment and confidence are falling quickly though, for now, consumers are continuing with life as normal.

What business needs now is stability, clarity and action. The first has been helped with the swift change of government, but the latter two remain firmly in its hands.

What is our desired outcome? When will negotiations start? Single market membership or not? Will EU citizens here be able to stay? These are things business needs answers on quickly.

We understand it’s complex, but so is life, and it must go on. As with so many policy issues, if government will only set the framework, business will do the rest.