THE labour crisis foisted upon the United Kingdom by a Brexit based largely it seems on fantasy has been described as possibly the biggest own goal of the debacle.
It comes as Scottish food producers are having to turn away business amid staff shortages, travellers are stranded in gridlock at Dover again this holiday, and the European Union is taking the UK Government to court over alleged breaches of its Brexit agreement.
This week, a critical incident was declared in Kent as freight and tourist traffic funnelled into a bottleneck it was claimed was caused by a lack of French border staff.
Also this week, the European Union has launched fresh legal action against the UK for failing to comply with the Northern Ireland Protocol.
“Despite repeated calls by the European Parliament, the 27 EU Member States and the European Commission to implement the Protocol, the UK Government has failed to do so,” the Commission said. “In a spirit of constructive co-operation, the Commission refrained from launching certain infringement procedures for over a year to create the space to look for joint solutions with the UK.
“However, the UK’s unwillingness to engage in meaningful discussion since last February and the continued passage of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill through the UK Parliament go directly against this spirit.”
In Scotland, worker shortages are costing money daily, business correspondent Kristy Dorsey reveals.
Loch Duart Salmon has been “repeatedly forced to turn business away this past year as it grapples with acute labour shortages that have beset Scotland’s food and drink sector in the wake of Brexit”, she writes, adding it further underlines problems faced by food manufacturers in particular after an estimated 1.3 million people from overseas left the UK during the pandemic.
Industry leaders said post-Brexit immigration policy has made it all but impossible to replace those lost workers.
Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary called for a relaxation of the UK visa and immigration rules to help ease staffing pressures.
Historian Phillips Payson O’Brien, Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St Andrews, said: “The ending of free movement with the rest of Europe is quickly becoming the greatest economic own goal of the Brexit disaster.”
The Home Secretary declined to attend the Home Affairs Committee amid immigration and refugee policy concerns, while the Foreign Secretary has been busy also.
Business editor Ian McConnell pulled back the curtain on how Liz Truss’s declaration this week that raising taxes will “choke off” growth would have been almost funny, were the UK economy not in such a sorry state right now.
“It was close to laughable because it came from someone who now seems to be among the biggest fans of Brexit,” he writes. “This is, we should remember, the same Cabinet minister who has portrayed trade agreements with tiny benefits, such as those with Australia and New Zealand, as big deals.”
Also this week, there was an amicable parting of the ways for Mackie and Taylor families, who worked jointly on crisp business Mackie’s at Taypack.
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