UK Business is going to have to learn to live with political uncertainty. It is well placed to do so.

Business craves certainty and stability. Over the years I have worked with business to promote investment, growth and entrepreneurship those two words in connection with the political and regulatory framework are the ones I have heard most often. Time and again politicians and officials are told above all else what business needs is policy and regulatory certainty. A level playing field comes soon after as a requirement. In the UK we have been lucky with our politics. We have grown accustomed to stability. We have an election every four or five years. We elect a government. They get on with it.

We have a civil service, which for all the criticisms levelled at it, delivers balanced policy and mitigates the more fanciful ideas the politicians come up with.

Generally too in our other institutions the UK has been, on the whole, a haven of stability – the law, media, police, banks, regulation, the welfare state, public sector delivery of key services, and so on. We have grown used to these things being a feature of our everyday life.

We have also grown used to the idea of an essentially free market orientated economy that welcomes investment and entrepreneurship from across Europe and around the world.

All this activity has sat in a stable and certain political system. Parliament has been a place where business could find ready ideas. A place where there was a general understanding that you cannot have welfare without wealth creation.

But that era, for the time being at least, has is clearly coming to an end.

Trust in Parliament, political parties and their leaders is questioned more than ever before. As too is trust in business leaders. The public is expressing itself increasingly dissatisfied with the way politics and business operate.

For politicians the battle is to attract votes and members for their respective parties. The independence referendum in Scotland shows people can be galvanised by political issues. People will participate if they feel the issues are big enough and the political leadership is there.

For business the challenge is to embrace greater transparency and accountability. To explain the importance of the role it plays in generating wealth, creating jobs, bringing efficiency to markets and service delivery. That businesses small, medium – and large – are vital parts of not just the UK economy but society too. With a full and proper role to play.

The political geography of British politics continues to splinter. The next Parliament looks as though the political landscape will be more complicated, not less than the current one. Britain is changing and in nowhere more so than the political geography of the country, in London, Wales and Northern Ireland business is already well suited to dealing with a range of political partners. In local government this has been true for a long time. Now at Westminster a new reality has dawned and business will need to respond so that it can continue to thrive, generating the wealth and the jobs that we all want. Successful businesses are by their nature entrepreneurial, innovative and flexible. They are the ones that will respond and thrive in this new political world.