Apologies for the coarse language that is about to be used, but: bullshit.
Next door to the UK, the Irish government started planning for the worst effects of Brexit right after Cameron set the date for the referendum. Each affected government department had to produce contingency planning and modelling of what would be needed in the event of the various outcomes from remain all the way down to complete and sudden detachment of the UK from the EU. What happened isn’t as bad as the worst case scenario that was planned for, but it’s still worse than the worst expected outcome.
I’ve mentioned this story before, but a family member works at a quite high level for the Irish Department of Finance, specifically in customs, and as part of this role, they had always had monthly meetings with British Government counterparts. At the first meeting following the Brexit vote, the Irish delegation brought in a stack of box-files containing outline policy documents and contingency measures with the comment “Let’s not waste time with Brexit until we’re properly briefed: here’s our planning and concerns; we’ll take yours, we’ll both go away and review each other’s documents and discuss at the next meeting”. The response was a sheepish admission that there were no documents, because there had been no planning done at all for a Leave outcome.
Later it transpired that this wasn’t negligence, but actually by order of the Cabinet. Apparently, they were worried that if planning documents were to leak out of the civil service before the election, it might sway the vote.
From friends and family who work in companies here with dealings with UK-based businesses, it would appear that the UK government has abdicated its responsibilities to help UK business through this mess: a lot of companies learned about their export and import requirements by speaking to customers and suppliers in the EU, not from anything HM Government did. Perhaps part of the problem is any explanation of the effects of Brexit to businesses is effectively an admission that Brexit is an economic disaster for the UK. It seems that Boris Johnson’s famous “**** business” comment may well have been an instruction...
You don’t wait until you can smell smoke before installing a sprinkler system and ordering fire extinguishers.