Alright, I’ll come clean. I voted for Brexit. I didn’t care about immigration, nor did I believe that Eurocrats wanted to regulate the shape of bananas.
What I did think that was, if leaving the EU made the British economy self-sufficient - by, for instance, encouraging us to buy more British-made cars - that the inevitable short-term pain would be followed by long-term gain. Now, five years after I cast my vote, and nine months since Brexit actually happened, I’m still hopeful but not as sure as I was.
Like everyone else I know in the trade, Mole Graphics has spent much of this year wrestling with the disruption of supplies (especially consumables), the cost of supplies, and the stop/start lockdown economy (which, although a lot of people have moaned about, I regarded as essential to try and protect public health). At the back of mind, I’ve also been worrying that if we got a really big order, whether we could fulfil it and whether, therefore, I should stock up on materials, stick them in the warehouse and, quite possibly, lose money if the business didn’t come in.
Obviously, no-one could have foreseen the pandemic. It added to the confusion but it also gave the Government an alibi for its own shortcomings. All of the blatantly obvious risks that came with Brexit - confusion over rules, paperwork and taxes; a dearth of HGV drivers (already a problem before we left the EU), supplies getting stuck in ports or at customs - seem to have completely confounded left ministers and officials, none of whom seem to have a passing acquaintance with the concept of scenario planning.
Their first response was to mutter about inevitable “teething troubles”. Then they set up a support fund for SMEs to manage Brexit, which hasn’t supported anyone I know in the trade, probably because the online application process is more complicated than rocket science. As cunning plans go, this government’s Brexit strategy wouldn’t have passed muster with Baldrick, let alone Blackadder.
Now they’ve just stopped talking about it, hoping things will get better. Which they will - over time. A good idea implemented by idiots does not become a bad idea. So, despite the constant ribbing from my Remainer friends, I still think it was worth the risk, just about.