The UK PR industry has suffered since Brexit. Can Labour help?

Cast your mind back to 2016 and the Brexit referendum, if you can bear it. 

Boris Johnson and his supporters made many promises to voters, chief among them that Brexit would ‘unite and level up the country’. It was a vote against the status quo, a vote to control immigration, make our own laws and operate our own trade policy, leaving us free to strike deals independent of the EU trading block. Johnson and his supporters insisted that by voting for Brexit we were voting for freedom and prosperity.

A very large minority saw straight through the rhetoric. And, for a significant proportion of the rest, well, hindsight, as they say, is a wonderful thing… so much for ‘taking back our destiny’, so much for controlling immigration, so much for building prosperity by ‘taking back control’. The hard truth is, Britian has by and large rebuilt many of the trading arrangements it had as part of the EU, but it now has a much worse relationship with its biggest trading partner – yes, the EU. For European businesses, their access to the UK market is almost unchanged. For British businesses this one-sided frontier is little short of a disaster. This expensive version of Brexit has left the country divided and businesses disadvantaged, with the UK economy undisputedly worse off.

Setting up business in Paris

Thinking about it now, setting up Persuasion in Paris in the aftermath of Brexit was possibly a naïve and somewhat foolhardy move. The bureaucracy has been mind blowing, and expensive: residence permits, visas, bank forms, credit applications, confusing taxes and labour laws. On top of which, the Schengen visa waiver scheme – which limits non-EU Persuasion staff to only spending 90 days in every 180-day period in the EU – is hardly useful for long term projects.

Yet, in other ways, it was little short of inspired, giving us a competitive advantage over many of our rivals. Brexit has forced many British PR agencies to abandon their European branches and give up their international dreams. It may be seven years since the referendum, but as PR Week’s UK Top 150 Consultancies project recently revealed, businesses are still taking a hit, with more than ever saying that Brexit impacted their business in 2022 more than the year before.

And it’s a similar story in the rest of the creative industries, whether it’s the British musicians whose gigs have dried up on the continent (a recent ISM survey found that almost half of UK musicians / workers in the music business have less work overseas since Brexit) or the British productions which now risk being excluded from streaming platforms across the EU since the European Commission’s new quota favouring EU created content.

Point of difference

But the Paris office of Persuasion has given our business a point of difference. We recognise that public relations today is a global business and without our EU-based office to serve our clients, we would be doing them a great disservice. London was previously seen as a strategic gateway to the EU. But now, every time I visit Cannes Lions, the shrinking UK presence gives credence to this London-losing-its-edge idea. Never has it been more important to have a foothold in the EU.

The UK’s departure from the EU has hit me on a personal level as well. As a resolute Francophile, with a studio in Nice, I now find the amount of time I am allowed to spend in France restricted. While once a glorious European, I am now an outsider. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that Brexit has broken my heart. 

So what would I like Sir Kier to do about all this? 

We are often told, not least by Labour politicians, that the possibility of re-joining the EU is over. After all, who could bear to open up another referendum debate? But softening some of the harder edges of Johnson’s Brexit deal, if not reopening the conversation about rejoining the Customs Union and revisiting the idea of some kind of EU membership, must surely be on the table. Labour would have a glorious opportunity to fix some of the damage of our so-called hard Brexit and few could deny the economic imperative of doing so. 

I’d also like Labour to acknowledge the importance of the creative industries. Stamer’s wish-list for a revised Brexit deal includes veterinary affairs, professional services and security. The creative industry – which contributes £109bn a year to the UK economy – needs to be included. We need visa processes and bureaucracy simplified to make it easier to work and travel in the EU, plus access to talent from the bloc.

Rebuilding trust

Stamer’s intention to rebuild trust with the EU and get a better deal for the British people is a positive start, promising to work towards removing trade and travel barriers by building a better relationship with our European neighbours. If we can’t cancel Brexit, then at least there has to be a better way to try and make it work, ditching what he calls “the fatburg of red tape and bureaucracy” that hampers the flow of British business. In a speech last year Stamer promised that he would, “unclog the arteries of our economy and allow trade to flourish once more.”

Last month Kier Stamer completed his international mini-tour, with some confidential talks with Emmanuel Macron in Paris. The talks were reported as, “very constructive and positive” though few details emerged. He heralded the visit with a newspaper interview promising that a Labour government would seek significant rewrites of Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal when it reaches a review point in 2025. I just hope that, if elected, he can find his way out of this quagmire of Brexit, to give fresh hope to business under a Labour government. We had enough false promises from Boris Johnson to last a lifetime. Let’s just hope that with Stamer, his word really is his bond.

Jane Austin is the founder of communications company Persuasion.

Main image sourced from UK Parliament under licence.