The BCC’s Director of International Trade reflects on a week spent travelling across the UK talking investment and trade:
This week I’ve been on the road, with two key stops at sports grounds.
At Edgbaston, home of Warwickshire County Cricket Club, I watched ministers, mayors, and investors gather for the UK Regional Investment Summit, the first such event held outside London. Two days later, I was at Stoke City Football Club, speaking about trade at the sharp edge of geopolitics. Two venues, two very different audiences, but one story: Britain’s efforts to turn ambition into action.
Because the truth is, history won’t remember another summit on investment. What it will remember is the engines that actually delivered growth and investment in our regions. Place matters.
Edgbaston: Promise, Partnership, and Potential
The 2025 Regional Investment Summit had three Ps: promise, partnership, and potential. The mood in Birmingham was genuinely confident and forward-looking. The West Midlands has attracted over 130 foreign investment projects this year, worth nearly £19 billion and creating more than 5,800 jobs. The East Midlands has seen a 16% rise in FDI, while the North East’s new AI Growth Zone is forecast to draw £30 billion in private capital. That’s not theory, that’s delivery.
The political commitment was also clear. Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced a ‘blitz on business bureaucracy’, cutting red tape and regulations to save UK firms an estimated £6 billion a year. Business and Trade Secretary, Peter Kyle, underlined the government’s laser focus on driving growth across every part of the country, while Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, reinforced Britain’s commitment to low-carbon energy, affordability, and long-term security.
More than £10 billion of new investment was unveiled, creating nearly 1,000 jobs for local communities. The Sterling 20 was also launched. It is an investor-led partnership of 20 major UK pension funds and insurers, which will channel billions into infrastructure and high-growth sectors such as AI, fintech, and advanced manufacturing. Over 350 business leaders, mayors, and ministers attended, united by one message: Britain is open for investment and regions are ready to deliver.
While I was there, I spoke with leaders of the North East Combined Authority, who told me how devolution deals are finally translating into practical delivery, not just strategy papers. They pointed to projects where regional flexibility has cut decision times in half and helped land international investors who would otherwise have gone elsewhere.
In a separate conversation with a manufacturing CEO from Coventry, I heard the same refrain: “We’ve got the products, the talent, the ideas, what we need now is to speed up the planning regulations.” And that, ultimately, was the subtext of the entire event. Optimism is high, but we have heard similar announcements before, it is delivery that counts; the clock is ticking, and global headwinds are building.
Stoke: where geopolitics meets growth
While Edgbaston showcased domestic momentum, the discussions I had in Stoke were about those global headwinds and the geopolitics shaping the trade and investment environment Britain must now compete in.
This week alone, several of the UK’s largest listed companies issued profit warnings, citing rising tensions between China and the United States. Despite this, far too many firms continue to hedge their bets between the two economic superpowers.
Given the almost daily shifting red lines between Washington and Beijing on technology, data, and supply chains such hedging is dangerous. It risks not just corporate penalties but higher costs that will inevitably be passed on to consumers, as they always are.
That’s the context in which British businesses now operate. Political risk is no longer abstract it’s showing up in balance sheets, profit margins, and boardrooms. For so many small businesses they are flying blind within the whirlwind of these geopolitics.
In Washington, Donald Trump has already shifted expectations, with tariffs once again used as strong-armed diplomacy. In Beijing, China is not only the world’s factory but its rule-maker, setting standards for technology, AI, and energy while pursuing self-reliance and regional dominance. In Brussels, new mechanisms like the Carbon Border Adjustment (CBAM) are exporting European regulations worldwide, and across the Gulf, sovereign wealth funds have become powerful geopolitical actors, moving faster than many governments. The result is that political risk is now business risk.
Yet amid all this turbulence, Britain’s opportunity has never been clearer. Exports already support six million UK jobs and make up 60% of GDP. A modest 2% uplift in exports could raise national growth by 0.6%, providing billions in tax revenue for the government. If we want to grow, we can’t just look West or East, we have to look everywhere and we must move faster than our competitors to get there.
A world that won’t wait
Having lived and worked in China for over a decade, I’ve seen first-hand how fast global trade is moving. Deals that once took ten years now take ten months. Countries are racing to secure minerals, technologies, and markets. While the UK retains extraordinary advantages; the rule of law, trusted institutions, world-class universities, and deep financial markets, we are not moving at the pace now required.
One overseas investor I met at the Birmingham summit put it bluntly: “We’d have invested more if the UK had better grid connectivity and lower energy costs.” The message was honest, and fair. The fundamentals matter and they are holding back capital that wants to come here. This is why speed and certainty must now become our defining competitive edge.
The uncomfortable truth is that few governments are great at speed. That’s not a criticism per se, it’s just the reality of scale and structure. Which is why the private sector matters more than ever. Businesses have the agility, the networks, and the drive to deliver growth, if only given the freedom and consistency to do so. What they don’t need right now are more tax rises or new layers of compliance.
The UK doesn’t need another grand plan. It already has the trade and industrial strategy, what it needs is execution. The architecture exists: the Office for Investment, combined authorities, metro mayors, and the Chamber network. What’s missing is coordination and trust.
At the British Chambers of Commerce, we see that potential. Our 51 chambers in the UK, and 75 internationally, connect the grassroots of British business to global markets. Our new Diplomatic Advisory Hub with the Foreign Office will help firms navigate geopolitical shocks in real time. Our Trade Accelerator programme will move exporters from strategy to sales. And our next Driving International Trade Conference will bring together business and government to do deals, not just talk about them.
Two different sports grounds. One message.
At Edgbaston, we celebrated ambition; at Stoke, we confronted reality. Both matter because they’re part of the same game: turning Britain’s potential into performance. We are a powerful nation with world-class assets. But the world will not wait for us to catch up. The global race for growth is already under way, and Britain can’t afford to play at walking pace.
If we align vision with delivery, empower business instead of burdening it, and act with confidence abroad and coordination at home, we won’t just keep up, we’ll lead. In the end, growth doesn’t happen in speeches or strategy documents. It’s won on the pitch.