British businesses do not want another referendum on Brexit and have no appetite for re-entering a customs union with the EU, the leader of the UK’s largest business lobby group has warned.
Despite growing clamour on the left of British politics for the UK to rejoin the EU, CBI director-general Rain Newton-Smith told the FT that 10 years after the 2016 vote the business community did not want to go back — despite acknowledging the economic pain caused by leaving the world’s largest trading bloc.
“The evidence is compelling and indisputable that Brexit has created costs for business,” she said, but “businesses aren’t looking to relitigate the referendum. None of the business leaders I speak to want to reopen that debate.”