Campaign to embrace new view of British enterprise

A few dozen of Britain’s top entrepreneurs, finance chiefs and a smattering of policymakers gathered in a shared workspace in central London last Wednesday for the official launch of Enterprise Britain. The campaign is an attempt to replace the current defeatist narrative about Britain by reawakening ambition, helping great businesses to grow and sharing future prosperity more widely. As one curmudgeonly senior executive in the room observed, this has been tried a few times before, without much success. But Brent Hoberman and Stephen Fitzpatrick, the successful serial entrepreneurs who came up with the idea (back when the traditional voice of industry, the CBI, was in crisis), think this time can be different.

Reason number one is that Britain's entrepreneurial ecosystem is in far better shape than is generally believed. There are lots of startups, plenty of unicorns (with some initial public offerings potentially coming soon), and lots of seed and early-stage capital available. (Later-stage, scale-up capital is more problematic.) And there is a growing number of colourful characters with inspiring stories to tell, some of whom are on Enterprise Britain’s advisory board (including Zilch founder Philip Belamant, Richard Reed of Innocent Drinks and Multiverse’s Euan Blair).

The discussion in the room was determinedly positive about the efforts of the government, which sent a couple of people to the launch. (Since Labour got elected, has any similar gathering of business leaders concluded without complaints about high taxes or the war on non-doms?) The new sovereign AI fund was welcomed – especially its accompanying promise to approve, in a day, visas for essential foreign workers (let’s see). Most of the grumbles focused on the failure of Britain’s pension industry to invest morethan the current pittance in growing the successful British businesses of the future.

Photograph by Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images