Our Man in Westminster: Brexit, benefits cuts and price rises spell disaster warns MP Drew Hendry as he warns of current government policy 'you won’t find a more tasteless joke in the cheapest crackers'
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Panic fuel buying, empty shop shelves, unharvested crops, a collapse in exports and chronic labour shortages are all, in part, or in the case of exports, fully down to Brexit.
Take the disastrous decision to leave the biggest single market globally and end freedom of movement, add in the toxic Tory mix of cuts to Universal Credit, increased energy costs and rising inflation and it’s easy to see why people are predicting a winter of discontent, with Brexit turbo-charging the gloom.
Meanwhile Tory politicians are out in force every day – in print, on our screens and radios – trying to deny the impact of Brexit.
To be fair, it is what we expect from the Tories – trying to defend the indefensible is their staple, but where is the Official Opposition? The Labour party is on record saying they won’t look at reversing the damage of Brexit. Sir Keir Starmer was urging people in Scotland to vote Labour – despite the party offering to inflict more of the same Tory harm. Sorry Sir Keir, nobody is buying it.
Just for starters, we urgently need a realisation from the UK government and Labour at Westminster that the UK immigration system does not meet the needs of Scotland.
The humiliating and pathetic Westminster U-turn to allow 5000 HGV drivers and 5500 poultry temporary working visas isn’t going to even plaster over it.
The British Chambers of Commerce termed the action as “throwing a thimble of water on a bonfire”, and they are right.
Why on earth will 10,000 continental Europeans come to work in the UK for only three months when they can find better-paid jobs closer to home?
Those who do respond to the “help us save the UK’s Christmas” plea will then be promptly kicked out on December 24. You won’t find a more tasteless joke in the cheapest crackers.
Although I don’t hold much hope, maybe this desperate U-turn is a sign of the penny dropping in Westminster. If that’s the case, the UK government needs to genuinely engage with the EU to seek solutions to their self-imposed crisis.
It beggars belief that any government would continue to inflict this level of self-harm on its economy.
Before Brexit, they called it scaremongering; now, we are told there is no crisis. They desperately hope you will look away long enough not to see the catastrophe unfolding but is hard to imagine anyone out there who isn’t seeing what a Tory Brexit looks like in all its horrific glory.
