Samantha Cameron's Cefinn struggles due to Brexit

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jan 28, 2021

Samantha Cameron said on Thursday that her Cefinn fashion brand is finding the trading environment with the EU “challenging and difficult” since Britain left the bloc and the transitional trade deal ended late last year.

She said the UK government needs to talk more to small companies and that she was seeing “teething issues” in trying to deal with the giant economic group of 27 countries.

She was speaking on BBC Radio 4 in her first solo broadcast interview since her husband stepped down as Prime Minister following the EU referendum in June 2016. 

She said that as well as Brexit, there had been issues influenced by the pandemic, although she seemed to suggest that the UK’s EU exit was the biggest bugbear as “there [were] no issues trading with the US or outside the EU”.

Samantha Cameron launched her contemporary womenswear label shortly after the family left Downing Street. Prior to her husband becoming PM, she’d also been in creative control at luxury brand Smythson.

On the subject of the trading problems she’s facing, she said she hoped the current issues are merely teething troubles but until they’re sorted out, bringing goods into the country from outside the UK, and then trying to sell them back into Europe, remains difficult. And that’s especially the case for smaller businesses.

She said current PM Boris Johnson must “talk to all the businesses out there who are in a similar position to me. There are lots. It is the smaller businesses [that are being affected] because we can't afford to have warehouses in Europe and that sort of thing. I'm sure there are ways of sorting it out.

“It does need to be looked at because otherwise we can't grow our business [and] if we can't grow our business, it is frustrating. Unless some of the expense and cost of doing that is looked at, it will be challenging.”