The quotation, 'give me a child for seven years and I will show you the man' is linked with the Jesuits and their founder, St Ignatius Loyola. It in fact came from Aristotle, but altered subtly to I will give you the man.

It is now seven years since the Brexit referendum and if that quotation held true, having got what they wanted, its advocates should by now have delivered. However even the most enthusiastic supporter of Brexit would struggle to make a case for that seven-year delivery. Some to the fore then, including Boris Johnson and Owen Paterson, have left politics in disgrace.

But from the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, down the cabinet remains packed with people who enthusiastically supported Brexit and so by definition have failed to deliver.

If the seven-year delivery thinking had held we would now have an agricultural industry embracing technology to be globally competitive; the industry would have been freed of burdensome EU regulations, especially over greening to make it less productive; trade with new markets would be booming on the back of deals we were promised countries were waiting to sign with a newly independent UK.

Instead we seem to have the same regulatory burden, the trade deals signed are to the disadvantage of agriculture, because they bring cheap food. Overhanging that is a sense the government has a minimal interest in agriculture, other than as a vehicle to deliver an unproven green vision.

The EU is not much better, but its commitment to agriculture is still there, while it has disappeared at Westminster. This was evident in a multi-million euro aid package agreed by Brussels to help with the financial problems in agriculture.

Long before the ill-conceived Brexit referendum, which David Cameron wrongly never contemplated losing, Europe was a running sore for the Conservative party.

That was never going to be healed by the referendum but Cameron gambled the future of the UK economy to shore up his party. Instead he made things worse and ended his political career. For many in the party leaving Europe was viewed with an almost religious zeal, while others, most notably Johnson, saw it as a vehicle for personal political ambition.

Those ultimately foundered on a rock of lies and deception. EU membership should not have been about principles for politicians, but trade. Despite a level of political union, the EU, like the old EEC, is ultimately about trade and free trade in particular.

It is a massive global trade bloc, capable of going head-to-head with any other trade bloc or individual country. The ultimate outcome of the referendum was to walk away from this.

Each month the EU produces figures for its agricultural trade. These confirm it is the world's biggest food and agriculture trading bloc, with a healthy balance of trade gap between imports and exports of around £4.5 billion a month.

This reflects a mix of good exports and controls on imports to protect agriculture, once dubbed Fortress Europe. It has some of the biggest and best global free trade deals, not least with Japan which created the world's biggest free trade area.

This is what the UK opted to walk away from seven years ago. The deals it has signed since with the southern hemisphere, offer fewer protections for farmers than those being negotiated by Brussels. If it produced the deals agreed by the UK they would not secure the 27 member states unanimity needed for ratification.

The government made much of joining the trans-Pacific free trade pact, but in reality the UK when a member of the EU already had much of the market access it is celebrating.

The bottom line, when it comes to trade, is that as far as the EU is concerned Brexit has had no measurable impact. The UK remains the EU's biggest export market for food and agriculture exports. The UK remains its number two source of imports, beaten only by Brazil because of the volume of soya the EU imports. There is however a key difference since Brexit.

Export businesses are succeeding despite dealing with all the customs regulations imposed by the EU on third countries, albeit with some special arrangements for the UK. By contrast the government that wanted Brexit, unlike the EU that did not, has yet to introduce any customs controls on EU food imports. Seven years has certainly not 'given the man', prompting the question as to what was the point of Brexit?