Zoopla founder Alex Chesterman has made a rare foray into politics after signing an open letter along side 100 other business people that calls for the UK to stay inside the EU Customs Union after it departs Europe next year.

Organised by Innocent drinks founder Richard Reed (pictured, below), other signatories of the letter include Julian Metcalfe of Pret a Manger as well as the founders of clothing website Net-a-Porter, food firms Domino’s Pizza and Yo! Sushi plus clothing firm Jack Wills.

The letter is a direct response to the ‘softer’ Brexit agreed at Prime Minister Theresa May’s Chequer’s cabinet gathering over the weekend.

During the meeting a ‘facilitated customs arrangement’ was agreed. This would remove the need for a hard border with the EU in Ireland by making the UK into an EU Free Trade area.

But the group of business leaders who signed the letters have attacked this solution as being not soft Brexit enough, while hard-line Brexiteers have criticised it for making too many concessions to the EU.

The letter says that: “The cost, complexity and bureaucracy created by crashing out of the customs union and adopting alternative arrangements is the last thing that our businesses need as we seek to grow and employ more people. It would amount to the British government tying the hands of British business.”

The letter also pleads with Conservative MPs to put aside their ideological differences and instead back a clutch of amendments introduced by several rebel Conservative MPs led by Anna Soubry and Labour’s Chuka Umunna.

Customs Union

These amendments have been added to a pair of customs and trade bills due to be debated in Parliament next week which would “offer business the certainty of remaining in a customs union with the European Union”.

Last week Anna Soubry said that: “Beyond a fringe who are committed to leaving the EU for ideological reasons, Conservative MPs are instinctively pro-business and pragmatic.

“They have seen the way in which leading businesses have warned about the potential for huge damage that a hard Brexit will bring, and they have heard business organisations and firms – large and small – make their case.”

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