We’re faced with empty shelves and driver shortages. Yet those in charge today seem totally out of their depth
Among the words that will send the collective British psyche into panic, three are among the most potent: Christmas, petrol, and winter. Put them together, and you have the perfect ingredients for a crisis, made all the more surreal by the fact that one of its key causes – Brexit – is a word no one in politics wants to mention.
Despite ministers’ assurances that the lack of fuel is all in our heads, queues at garage forecourts extend into the distance. Supermarkets are full of empty shelves; rising energy prices threaten household budgets. Everybody knows that the UK’s labour shortages are dire, and that a deficit of 100,000 hauliers is serious indeed.
