In my eleven years as Director General of the Institute of Export and International Trade, I worked with fourteen ministers who held responsibility for trade. Fourteen. That is an average tenure of under ten months each barely enough time to master a brief, let alone drive a coherent agenda.
I didn’t count them to make a political point. I counted them because that number explains, more than any single policy decision, why the UK has struggled to build a consistent, world-class trade capability and why the lessons of Brexit remain so poorly understood, even now.
The Border Is Not What You Think It Is
The most enduring misconception in trade policy (one I spent over a decade correcting) is that a border is not a line, it is a system.
In reality, the border is the visible tip of an enormous iceberg. Beneath it lies a complex system of tariff classifications, rules of origin analysis, risk profiling, sanitary and phytosanitary frameworks, trusted trader schemes, and digital infrastructure that must all work in concert.
Most of that work is not by government officials, but by the private sector importers, exporters, customs brokers, and freight forwarders long before goods reach any checkpoint. Policy that ignores this reality produces unworkable outcomes. And for much of the Brexit period, policy ignored this important point.
Complexity Cannot Be Delivered at Political Speed
The single greatest lesson of the Brexit implementation period is one that should be carved above the entrance to every trade ministry: complexity cannot be delivered at political speed.
The UK’s customs intermediary sector was dramatically undersized for the volume of declarations that would be required after leaving the EU single market. This was not a surprise, those of us in the real world were raising it years before 2021 to anyone that would listen. The workforce simply was not there on day one, because the investment in training and professionalisation came far too late.
A longer, more structured transition with granular business engagement rather than high-level consultation would have made an enormous difference. The phased approach to import controls that eventually emerged should have been the plan from the start, not a concession extracted under industry pressure.
The Myth That Did the Most Damage
Of all the misconceptions that shaped this period, the one that frustrated me most professionally was the persistent belief that customs is simple that its complexity is artificial, invented by bureaucrats, and was removable by political will.
This myth had consequences. It led to underinvestment in professional training. It produced a dramatic underestimation of the intermediary workforce needed. It meant that businesses were told they would “work it out” once the system went live. And it meant that, repeatedly, the case for technical expertise had to be argued from first principles to ministers who were, through no fault of their own, at the beginning of their learning curve.
Customs law is a centuries-old discipline. Tariff classification alone requires trained judgement and is regularly litigated at the highest courts. Political will is not a substitute for professional knowledge and the Brexit implementation experience proved it at considerable cost.
Did Brexit Make UK Companies Better Global Traders?
There was a compelling argument made at the time that once a UK company learned the disciplines of exporting documentation, customs entries, rules of origin, import VAT etc it would break a psychological and operational barrier, making it more likely to pursue markets beyond the EU.
In practice, the evidence is mixed. A cohort of larger, more sophisticated businesses did develop genuinely transferable skills, and some found it easier to enter markets in North America, the Gulf, and Asia-Pacific as a result. The disciplines are the same; the muscle memory transfers.
But for the majority of SMEs, the picture is less encouraging. Many stopped exporting to the EU altogether rather than investing in compliance capability. The administrative burden was a deterrent, not a launchpad to new markets. The UK’s export performance over the ten-year period has been underwhelming relative to comparable economies, and the data on SME export participation has not shown the uplift the theory predicted.
Compliance capability is necessary but not sufficient for export growth. It must be accompanied by market intelligence, export finance, and genuine commercial opportunity none of which Brexit automatically provided.
What Brexit Did Get Right
For all the disruption, Brexit did something that years of advocacy had failed to achieve, it put customs in the spotlight.
The profession grew. Enrolments in professional qualifications increased significantly. Employers who had previously never thought about customs expertise found out, often painfully, why it mattered. Government-industry dialogue became more structured. Companies that went through the Brexit compliance journey built a resilience in supply chain management, origin analysis, and regulatory navigation that served them well when the geopolitical turbulence trade wars of recent years arrived.
The trade war environment, the supply chain shocks, the proliferating sanctions regimes firms with Brexit-forged compliance capability adapted faster. That is worth noting.
The Challenge Now
The customs spotlight has faded faster than many of us would have liked. Businesses that resolved their immediate compliance issues moved on. The urgency dissipated. SMEs need to start exporting to support our shifting economy new market entry should be easier with the help of AI.
But the underlying complexity has not gone away. The UK’s trading relationships continue to evolve. New free trade agreements create new rules of origin obligations. Geopolitical fragmentation is reshaping supply chains. The skills requirement is, if anything, growing.
The lesson of fourteen ministers in eleven years is not simply that government lacked continuity though it did. It is that continuity, institutional memory, and technical expertise must live somewhere. Professional bodies, qualifications frameworks, and the intermediary sector exist precisely to provide what revolving ministerial appointments cannot.
Ten years on from the Brexit referendum, the evidence is overwhelming and the argument is won. The question is no longer whether technical expertise and institutional memory matter in trade policy it is why government keeps having to relearn that lesson from scratch. Fourteen ministers in eleven years was not an accident. It was a choice. And until that changes, the expertise will continue to sit where it always has — outside government, waiting to be asked. DM me if you want to talk more!
About the Author:
Lesley served as Director General of the Institute of Export and International Trade from 2008 to 2019.
To contact Lesley, or any of the International Trade team about your International Trade Strategy, you can visit our contact page.
