"Mainly though because the civil service hasn't actually done anything to prepare for brexit."
Bad form quoting yourself but I found some concrete evidence for this.
Government procurement is the one area that very accurately reflects their view of the future. The longer term the buy the better a predictor it is.
Hence with the Royal Navy in dire straights due to Cameron's defence cuts and very few frigates which are often older than their crews the recently announced Type 31 program is... interesting.
I've heard plenty about the year of the Royal Navy. "due to our rising defence budget of £178 billion over the next ten years" etc. Also about how we are going to reintegrate with the rest of the world and operate globally.... How our two new aircraft carriers will blah blah blah.
And yet the T31 has a hard budget ceiling of £250 million. No western nation has built warships for that amount, very rarely for twice that amount. It might sound like a lot, and a lot of defence figures are designed to confuse. For something that will be in service for 30 years that's a tadge more than £8m a year. Add in £10m a year for running costs etc. Which is roughly the equivalent of building and running a new school or so.
Come to think of it a school isn't a bad analogy given the number of engineers being trained on board.
If the government and civil service were planning on a global Britain then why would they be ordering budget basement warships which aren't even capable of operating alongside the carriers?
Anyone who still thinks we are going to get our fishing waters back might wonder why they're decommissioning three perfectly serviceable patrol vessels from the fisheries protection squadron 10 years early. They leased them until a few years ago when they bought them outright. These aren't warships per se, they count fish basically and cost all of £10m a year to run 4 of them.
If the MoD can't find £10m in £36Bn or replace our small frigate fleet on a one to one basis then what does that tell you?