Sunday, June 03, 2018
Doomsday Brexit revealed
I suppose it is the job of civil servants to plan for the worse-case scenarios, so I would expect there to be a document tucked away in the vaults of Whitehall Place outlining a doomsday scenario if Brexit goes tits-up in which we all go to hell in a handcart. And indeed, as this exclusive in the Sunday Times reveals, such a document does exist.
What is really frightening is not that such a scenario is being envisaged but that there are a substantial number of hardliners who actually want to go down the route of a no-deal Brexit irrespective of the consequences. More to the point, the way the current UK Government is behaving we could actually find ourselves in that sinking ship.
Well, Tim Shipman has outlined the consequences of leaving without a deal, and possibly also the consequences of the course chosen by the current government. He reports that the doomsday scenario envisaged by civil servants would see Britain hit with shortages of medicine, fuel and food within a fortnight:
A source said: “In the second scenario, not even the worst, the port of Dover will collapse on day one. The supermarkets in Cornwall and Scotland will run out of food within a couple of days, and hospitals will run out of medicines within two weeks.”
Officials would have to charter aircraft, or use the RAF to ferry supplies to the furthest corners of the UK. “You would have to medevac medicine into Britain, and at the end of week two we would be running out of petrol as well,” the source said.
This sounds remarkably like a Mad Max film, a dystopian future presided over by Theresa May and David Davis with Boris Johnson wielding a machine gun from the back of an adapted Fargo Warhorse Truck. Time for the people to have a say in my view.
What is really frightening is not that such a scenario is being envisaged but that there are a substantial number of hardliners who actually want to go down the route of a no-deal Brexit irrespective of the consequences. More to the point, the way the current UK Government is behaving we could actually find ourselves in that sinking ship.
Well, Tim Shipman has outlined the consequences of leaving without a deal, and possibly also the consequences of the course chosen by the current government. He reports that the doomsday scenario envisaged by civil servants would see Britain hit with shortages of medicine, fuel and food within a fortnight:
A source said: “In the second scenario, not even the worst, the port of Dover will collapse on day one. The supermarkets in Cornwall and Scotland will run out of food within a couple of days, and hospitals will run out of medicines within two weeks.”
Officials would have to charter aircraft, or use the RAF to ferry supplies to the furthest corners of the UK. “You would have to medevac medicine into Britain, and at the end of week two we would be running out of petrol as well,” the source said.
This sounds remarkably like a Mad Max film, a dystopian future presided over by Theresa May and David Davis with Boris Johnson wielding a machine gun from the back of an adapted Fargo Warhorse Truck. Time for the people to have a say in my view.
