Thread by @scotfoodjames

🚨BREXIT UPDATE, Sunday
More messages from food exporters who are finding the door to the EU is now shut. Haulage firms won’t take their loads; bureaucratic/IT systems failing.
A multi-billion pound trade system is being tested for the 1st time, in real time. And it’s going wrong

Brexit, week 1 was bad. Week 2 will be worse.
UK Govt’s dismissal of the request from us (& most main business orgs) for a grace period was a critical mistake. By this time next week, pressure to revisit that will be even greater. Emergency financial aid may also be necessary.

The crux of all this is sheer complexity & lack of prep time. For a product that has 24hrs to get to market, small delays at diff points are crippling. This is the “simplified” 18-step process for moving fish from Scotland to France. This, on top of 8-step process for importers

For those that say businesses had years to prepare, a reminder that the final Border Operating Model (all 160+ pages) was published 6 hours before the end of the transition period.
Yes, 6 hours.

We wrote to UKGov with 100 days to go warning that UK could not be ready & asking for a grace period.
With 60 days to go, we wrote to @BorisJohnson making the same plea. There was no willingness to even ask the EU about it.
Mistakes of 2020 are done.
2021 fixes now critical.

The pain of Brexit this week will be much less visual than many expect. It is unlikely to be the queues of lorries on motorways or on airport runways in Kent. It will be the pain of what is NOT happening: cancelled orders and EU customers starting to go elsewhere for their goods