Of course Britain is ‘open for business’. That was the point of Brexit

Today the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has launched a campaign telling the world that London is ‘still open for business’.  He has announced a Twitter hashtag: #LondonisOpen. It’s an odd campaign, echoing the ‘Britain is open for business’ line that George Osborne was trying to peddle before being sacked. The premise seems to be that the Brexit vote was a disaster, but one we can recover from if we grit our teeth and adopt the spirit of the blitz. But the only people who thought that Brexit would somehow not mean being open for business were Osborne, Khan and others advocating Project Fear. Their gloom was outvoted by the optimism of Vote Leave.

I’m sure that Mr Khan is very well-intentioned. But he’d do better to admit that Brexit was the biggest possible declaration that London – and the rest of the UK – is very much open for business. And, crucially, open to global business, not just EU business.