THE GUARDIAN:
Cheesemakers, farmers, exporters and wine merchants say red tape, lack of vision and rising costs mean they have stopped trading, sold up or retired early
Out of pocket, out of business, retired early. These are the tales of the “sunlit uplands” experienced by small-to-medium-sized businesses across Britain after
Brexit.
Between 16,000 to 20,000 businesses stopped exporting to the EU altogether, but others who soldiered on complain Boris Johnson’s government catered for the “blue chips”, not the small, everyday companies when they designed the hard Brexit for Britain.
Cheshire cheesemaker Simon Spurrell says Brexit didn’t just leave him with a
£250,000 hole in his small but fast-growing firm, but ultimately lost him his business.
Back in 2021, he described Brexit as the “biggest disaster” any government has negotiated. Looking back, nothing has changed his view.
“Brexit is the biggest self-harm that any government has inflicted on itself in recent history,” he says.
n the first few weeks of 2021, Ben Fletcher, the head of Logistics UK and then at Make UK, described Brexit as
“Dante’s fifth circle of hell”.
Five years later? “We got even further down, to Dante’s seventh or eighth circle of hell, at its worst,” he says.
Spurrell was a case in point. He discovered he could no longer export his award-winning cheese to the EU because every sale, even those only worth £30, would need to be accompanied by a £180 health certificate confirming they conformed with EU standards. He sold out to a bigger company that could cope with the paperwork.
“Every small business that issues animal foodstuff – meat, cheese, dairy, eggs, even pet food – suffered massively because they didn’t have the luxury of a large organisation that could blend in the paperwork and have someone dedicated to doing that,” says Spurrell.
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Lisa O’Carroll | Senior correspondent | Wednesday, June 24, 2026
Nobody with even a basic understanding of economics would ever have voted for Brexit. Brexit is, was, and will forever be the wet dream of losers, backward-thinking people, fossils, and the mentally-challenged!
We, the people, and small and medium-sized businesses have suffered greatly as a result Brexit. People like that mouthy, self-enriching, money-grubber and charlatan, Nigel Farage, hexed this country’s economy with that ridiculous notion of regaining our sovereignty. First of all, we never lost our sovereignty in the first place; rather, we pooled it with our brethren in Europe. Second, before the talk of Brexit, I very much doubt whether the average person in the street would have been able to define sovereignty anyway! Most normal people worry about having money in their pockets to be able to enjoy life, put food on the table, and keep themselves afloat. They care little about such abstract notions as sovereignty.
For me personally, Brexit added greatly to my grief. On May 1st that year, my life’s partner had died before my very eyes; so I was already grief-stricken as it was. On the 23rd of June, that year—2016—along came the shattering result of Brexit. I burst into tears; Brexit intensified my already extremely painful heartache and grief. With the death of my American partner, I had lost my window to the West; now, because of Brexit, I had lost my window to the East as well!
I know that I am probably not in any way typical of the average Briton, but I can honestly say, hand on heart, thaI I feel European with every fibre of my being. And with Brexit, that clown and jester had stripped me and millions of other Britons of a possible future in Europe. My window of possibilities was shattered into smithereens.
I shall never forgive Farage for the fiasco of Brexit, because he caused me far too much grief, pain, and sorrow. And it was all for mothing anyway. We the people gained no advantage from Brexit, and our economy has flatlined ever since. The only thing I can think of that certainly hasn’t flatlined is Farage’s bank balance! — © Mark Alexander
