My opinion as a small online business owner is this.
We will have to buy the brandname.uk to protect our brand and all we will do is 301 it to our co.uk because there is no reason to switch.
^ I think that will be the case for most co.uk owners, they wont move but they will have to have the .uk to protect their brand.
On the other hand I was thinking "Well maybe this will be a good opportunity for new businesses to get the name they want" but, it's a bad business plan to get a direct.uk without the co.uk because I would imagine a lot of direct traffic would by default go to the .co.uk version when typing it in.. so that's no good; if you have to buy the co.uk version you might as well just have done that in the first place and you don't need the direct.uk
For the above reasons I can't see how whoever suggested direct.uk wasn't logically shot down straight away.. assuming nominet are trying to do things in the best interest of the public.
Honestly, the one thing I am absolutely sure of is Nominet are not doing this in the best interests of the public /consumer.
Why would you impose on an already confused john bloggs the necessity to buy a jbplumbingservices.co.uk domain as well as a jbplumbingservices.uk domain next year. He is a retail buyer and it's not an investment, it's an unnecessary duplicated additional cost to his business. The majority of the people they have targeted for feedback will see a massive boon for their business interests from john bloggs having to fork out more money and not as a one off cost but recurring.