It brings me no pleasure at all reading this, or that your EU export side of your business is struggling due to Brexit Mick. I would much rather it was me, saying I was wrong to so passionately object leaving the EU. And fair play to you for putting your Brexit allegiance to one side and looking at it objectively.
As you point out, exports are a massive issue right now. Red tape has only increased many fold, as you would expect. I work with quite a few UK companies, some who have invested in extra staff and spent months preparing for this. They got 6 hours before the deal was ratified to implement it. And now they are having their business poached by companies in other EU countries.
And that is the benefit of the single market, it makes trade easier. Put yourself in a buyers position. Lets say you're a company in Portugal and you buy from the UK, now you have to pay for extra customs clearances, pay duties on goods of origin that is not in the UK and pay staff for their time dealing with the extra bureaucracy. In many cases its not worth their trouble and if they can switch supplier to a German or Dutch supplier then they will.
Exports bring money into this country and support jobs. And we have chosen to increase trade barriers with our largest customer. Its inevitable it will make us poorer. My stance on Brexit was always from a trade perspective. The reason the Leave side won the referendum was because of a fantastic PR campaign where they downplayed the threat towards trade and focused on things like sovereignty, immigration and the war, and worse of all disregarded the vast majority of expert economic opinion.
I did already know the majority of our fish was exported to the EU, its no different to Nissan workers in Sunderland voting to leave. Or any other worker in the UK who works for a company who exports into Europe and benefitted from the single market. The Leave campaign have convinced people to vote to be poorer, for no known trade benefits in return.
I'm quite resigned to the situation now, we just have to live with and accept it, I just hope its not as bad as I fear it could be for our economy. As always, it won't be the Boris Johnsons, Rees-Mogg's or Farage's who will suffer - but the working man who wants to provide for his family.
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