confirmed<\/a> that the customs control area near Ashford in Kent for lorries arriving in the UK on ferries will not be completed in time for the end of the transition period.<\/p>\nThe DfT says an unanticipated level of rainfall in England during the autumn is responsible for the slower pace of construction.<\/p>\n
Traffic jams of up to 7,000 lorries are expected in Kent, home of the UK\u2019s channel ports, caused by new and untried (and so potentially confusing) customs and border-control procedures at the end of the year.<\/p>\n
The National Audit Office has warned that there will be disruption regardless of the outcome of Brexit negotiations. Indeed, there have been 5-mile traffic jams in Kent the past few days as firms rush to boost their stockpiles before 1 January.<\/p>\n
If all this transpires, and most of it will, Brits will be in for a miserable new year, with the Covid pandemic adding to their wretchedness.<\/p>\n
Refusing to learn from the US experience when lockdown measures were eased during the Thanksgiving period, BoJo declined to follow the advice of his medical and public health advisers, and decreed that a similar lifting of lockdown restrictions should take place during a 5-day Christmas period. Then reality struck: a new and more contagious strain of the virus emerged, and Johnson was forced into another U-turn. The lockdown will only be lifted for Christmas Day itself.<\/p>\n
The baneful and tragic repercussions of such recklessness are almost inevitable.<\/p>\n
Brexit was from the beginning an ideological project designed to paper-over conflicts in the ruling Tory party (David Cameron\u2019s aim in calling the Brexit referendum); and then morphing into a mobilization, forefronted by this ideological project, to ensure electoral success (Theresa May and Johnson).<\/p>\n
Electoral success was duly delivered to the Tories, but Ukanian voters have yet to be confronted with the full price they\u2019ll have to pay as a consequence.<\/p>\n
All these voters can count on are more meaningless 3-word slogans on podiums, created by PR consultants paid a small fortune to do so, and accompanied by yet more rounds of resounding mismanagement.<\/p>\n
As I write supposed deadlines come and go.<\/p>\n
However, as the talks go deeper into December, the time-frame needed for EU-member governments to translate and scrutinize any agreed-upon document narrows inexorably, leaving the UK to end the transition period without a new trading arrangement with Brussels.<\/p>\n
The European parliament\u2019s leaders have said publicly they will need time to scrutinize the agreed text before the end of the transition period.<\/p>\n
The probable outcome is that there will be a no-deal period after I January, as negotiations between London and Brussels continue.<\/p>\n
This will force the UK to take emergency measures for which it is unprepared. So much for BoJo\u2019s attractive post-Brexit vista in 2016.<\/p>\n\n
This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photograph Source: EU2017EE Estonian Presidency \u2013 CC BY 2.0 In 2016, BoJo Johnson travelled into the future and arrived at a post-Brexit Britain. The vista he faced pleased\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3541"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3542,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3541\/revisions\/3542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}