[chalst]

You're mischaracterising the criticism.

The problem is not that it's surprising that trade deals are hard, nor even that the ones got so far are either relatively low volume affairs or involve concessions that some (all?) experienced trade negotiators consider unwise.

It's that the political class that engineered Brexit claimed that trade deals would be easy, labelled anybody who pointed out that they were wrong "remoaners", harassed career civil servants for giving honest advice, and hamstrung efforts to prepare for this frequently predicted situation.

I expected Brexit to be bad, but I was perfectly capable of having civil conversations with people who supported it. I didn't expect Brexit to be this bad, because I did not expect the Tories to be this incompetent, or the Brexit-supporting media to be this dishonest.

Now I know better.

[CodeGlitch]

So I agree with what you are saying, but I think you (and many people) misunderstand what a politician's job is for. They are there to deliver, and simplify messages to try and get people on-board with whatever idea they are campaigning for. This may mean over-simplifying a complex system, or "bending the truth" (a good politician can do this in the face of accusations about lying and claim that what they are saying is true if you look at the data in a certain sort of way). A politician is not your friend...again none of this is surprising.

> I didn't expect Brexit to be this bad,

I think we have different ideas of what "bad" is. There are understandable difficulties, but black-swan events in recent years have completely overshadowed any damage that Brexit may be causing. COVID-19 is "bad" in my books. Chinese/Russian influences are "bad". Also see chip shortages, global supply chain issues, etc. Arguments about fishing are not - unless you are one of the small number of people affected by this...again on the scale of a country I'm not convinced.

[chalst]

> I think we have different ideas of what "bad" is.

I think we don't: I think we have different beliefs about what the most important facts of Brexit are. I guesstimate Brexit will cause more suffering to the British people than Covid-19, though with low confidence, since one thing we agree about is the likelihood of game-changing surprises. Brexit has been a huge success for Russia, although something of a problem for China. Brexit has magnified the impact of the poor global economic situation on Britain. The fishing spat has caused quite a bit of injury to the UK's once very high reputation for diplomatic competence, although far less than the conduct of the UK's top negotiators between invoking Article 50 and signing the WA.