Britain has nearly ground to a halt and the country is facing supply shortages. However, the source of the problem is not fouled-up supply chains due to COVID; rather it is fouled-up supply chains due to BREXIT.
BREXIT was lauded as a return to autonomy for Britain. Its proponents promoted it with patriotic rancor and labelled anyone opposing it as traitors, out-of-touch elitists, or enemies-of-the-state. The campaign promised “tariff-free trade with minimum bureaucracy” and touted that ending the EU’s free movement of labor would raise wages for native Brits. In all their fervor, however, they simply ignored the downside. Now trucks leaving Dover for France have to provide a bevy of documents, including import-export declarations, identity and sanitation checks, and special inspection of agricultural goods. Multi-hour waits have replaced seamless travel across the border. British exports to the continent fell by 41%. And a labor shortage has decimated the British economy. Tens-of-thousands of continent-born workers left Britain before BREXIT or during COVID. Now shops, restaurants, food processing plants, and the trucking industry have been nearly gutted. Without truck drivers, gasoline has not been arriving at stations and many supermarket shelves sit empty.
BREXIT runs counter to the regionalism taking place across the globe. Regionalism finds synergies among neighboring countries that can be exploited by working closer together. Technology enables these synergies, but countries have to take advantage of them. Britain went in the opposite direction. This should have raised red flags, but the public didn’t understand the issues enough to vote properly and didn’t care enough to investigate.
So unlike the COVID-rooted supply chain problems occurring across the globe, this BREXIT-rooted one will not go away by the end of 2022. Most freight-haulers have raised prices to cover the cost of delays. Industries that relied on speed between Britain and the continent (e.g., seafood) simply disappeared. Brits will need to adjust to a smaller economy and less relevance on the world stage. Recent polling found that just 18% of Brits think BREXIT is going well, compared to 53% who think it’s going badly. Beware when someone appeals to patriotism over reason to justify a cause.
Source:
Ian Dunt, “Who Could Guess BREXIT Would Cause Food and Gas Shortages? Actually, Anyone,” Washington Post, 3 October 2021, B4; see https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/09/30/brexit-food-gas-shortage-predictable/
Photo: Reuters
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