Opinion

Tom Kelly: Post-Brexit Britain descending into farce

Tom Kelly

Tom Kelly

Tom Kelly is an Irish News columnist with a background in politics and public relations. He is also a former member of the Policing Board.

Empty shelves at a supermarket in London as retailers, manufacturers and food suppliers report disruptions due to a shortage of truck drivers. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein).
Empty shelves at a supermarket in London as retailers, manufacturers and food suppliers report disruptions due to a shortage of truck drivers. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein). Empty shelves at a supermarket in London as retailers, manufacturers and food suppliers report disruptions due to a shortage of truck drivers. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein).

I love cartoons especially those by the talented Ian Knox in this paper.

Cartoonists and illustrators cast a keen eye on events and bring them to life with an even sharper pencil. A cartoon which caught my attention this week was by Maddie Dai in the New Yorker.

It depicts Boris Johnson at a podium festooned with Union flags. And there’s a quote. “The shortages are all British made and British owned and that’s something we can all be incredibly proud of.”

Of course, Johnson didn’t say this but if he did one can imagine those living in Cloud Britain would applaud. These days the ‘Great’ in Great Britain is somewhat diminished.

Johnson leads one of the most talentless cabinets since Lord North’s government lost America in the 18th century.

Modern Britain is riven by shortages. Job vacancies are at their highest levels and there is no one to fill them. A chronic shortage of HGV drivers is exacerbating already disrupted supply lines. Low wages and tens of thousands of EU drivers preferring to stay on continental Europe rather than navigate the paperwork of post-Brexit Britain have created the problem. It won’t be fixed by making HGV testing easier. Who wants 100,000 driver vacancies filled by people who won’t be tested on reversing forty foot trucks? This is a recipe for disaster.

But when it comes to expertise in cooking up oven ready disasters - Johnson could excel on MasterChef with ruined economic soufflés.

Britain’s main supermarket chains are struggling to get their products into their own stores in Europe and seem even more incapable of getting European produce into their British stores. Some are forecasting a lean Christmas.

Having already had to bail out the depleted NHS during the pandemic - the British Army is now on standby to deliver fuel to petrol stations. Farmers in Britain are being told to dump their milk because it can’t be collected and dairies are cutting back on daily supplies to supermarkets. The food industry is in a mess. Brexit loving Brits who complained about those nasty Europeans taking away their jobs now find there are not enough workers to collect seasonal food or to work in the processing of it.

At least the British Meat Processors Association was honest enough to admit that they traditionally struggle to attract British workers into their plants.

So if the cunning Tories thought they could wean any workshy English off benefits to take up low paid and unattractive jobs in the agri-food sector they are gravely mistaken.

It’s odd that the Brexit fan club never gave a thought as to who was doing the slaughtering so that they could have a roast for their Sunday lunch at Wetherspoons, or who plucked the turkeys for the Christmas dinner.

Cement and timber prices have rocketed pushing up prices for house building and home extensions. Across the world deliveries are being impacted by shipping issues and post-Brexit rules. Free trade comes at a cost.

The British fishing industry has found itself marooned with no post-Brexit Nirvana in sight. The manufacturing sector has seen the worst disruption to its supply chains in forty years. But again this was forecast by Brexit-supporting economists before the referendum who went as far as to suggest manufacturing in Britain could be gone in ten years.

Not since David Icke predicted the world would end in 1997 has a people been so deceived with the ludicrous promise of a better Britain. Just last week, even Nigel Farage was complaining about going to seven petrol stations all without fuel. This is British farce at its best.

And yet here in Northern Ireland, we have some political parties actually wanting to impoverish our economy to the same extent as Boris’s post-Brexit Britain. This is a parity with Britain we can do without. Let’s take the politics out of the NI Protocol and let the technocrats and businesses make it work.