Westminster fiddles while the economy burns?

I suspect that George Cowcher, the chief executive of Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire Chamber, is probably being his normal diplomatic self when he says that Conservative party politicking about an EU referendum is “extremely unhelpful”.
While it’s true to say that businesses are unlikely to shed any tears if there was a bonfire of EU red tape tomorrow, Britain’s relationship with the Union is currently number 99 on the list of the top 10 challenges they face.
Businesses really do get riled by the time and money it takes to satisfy rules simply to get the job done (especially when the EU is meant to be a barriers-down single market), but what they crave more than anything else is stability: if we know what the rules are and they’re the same for everyone then they’ll usually grin and bear them.
The spectacle of politicians down in London spending OUR time and money jawing about an EU referendum might well strike businesses as not just indulgent but also irrelevant to where the economy is at right now.
What about business rates revaluation, what about energy and raw material costs, what about infrastructure, what about the availability of funding and the cost of new facilities, what about sorting UK government red tape?
Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire Chamber is the third biggest in the country, so the views of the businesses who comprise its membership ought to count for something.
Those views, expressed through its respected Quarterly Economic Survey, are that two-thirds of businesses want the UK to stay in the EU. What they want to change is the UK taking more control over some of the one-size-fits-all rules governing issues like employment.
The EU is not good at persuading ordinary people of its value, and has recently had a nasty habit of asking the same question a different way when people give it an answer it doesn’t like. As an institution, it has seemed both wrong-footed and lead-footed amidst the Eurozone crisis – a crisis that has had a painful impact on ordinary people in Greece and Spain.
Not being part of the eurozone has unquestionably helped the UK’s sluggish economy, allowing us to manipulate both interest rates and currency value in a way individual Eurozone countries cannot.
But businesses largely believe being a part of the wider EU at worst doesn’t make any difference, at best has its merits. If the Chamber’s survey is anything to go by, it’s the rules they quibble over, not club membership.