If you’re anywhere near Devon this weekend, be sure to visit a Plants Galore garden centre.
In Plymouth, Newton Abbot and Exeter, they’re giving away £100,000 of plants because they haven’t got the staff to look after them.
“With the advent of Brexit and the departure of many European staff from the UK, we are suffering the same problem as many other businesses in the South West in finding suitable staff who want to work,” team leader Matt Pollard told the Plymouth Herald.
Meanwhile, retailers lucky enough to still have enough staff are increasingly suffering from a nationwide shortage of HGV drivers.
According to the Road Haulage Association, which also blames a Brexit exodus for the problem, we need about 100,000 drivers to fill the growing number of empty shelves in our supermarkets.
So whether they grow their own products or rely on others to deliver them, Brexit is hitting businesses hard. And it’s barely seven months old.
Speaking of lorries, the Government snuck out the news this week that “emergency” measures brought in to counter the impact of, you guessed it, Brexit, on the port of Dover and around the channel tunnel at Folkestone are to be made permanent.
The change was published quietly on the Government’s website while MPs are on holiday. It means the authorities will be free to trigger Operation Brock, a traffic management system designed to cope with queues of up to 13,000 lorries heading for mainland Europe, whenever they want.
Parts of Kent, in other words, will now be under a permanent state of emergency.
At the other end of England, the chief executive of the North East England Chamber of Commerce wrote to the Prime Minister almost three weeks ago asking for urgent help with problems caused by – all together now – Brexit.
When I checked in with James Ramsbotham on my LBC radio show this week he told me he was still waiting for a reply, adding: “At least a third of our businesses here in the North East say Brexit is having a damaging impact.”
And then there’s farming, fishing, hospitality, the border in the Irish Sea… I could go on and, if you listen to the radio show, you’ll know that I frequently do.
But one thing is clear: the Brexit elephant is not just in the room, it’s smashing up the furniture, alienating the neighbours and trumpety-trumping away while Boris Johnson sticks his fingers in his ears and Keir Starmer looks the other way.
The last Labour leader failed utterly to oppose the Brexit fantasies and now-proven nonsense that propelled Johnson into Downing Street. If the current one doesn’t find a way to highlight its dismal realities soon, HE will be staying there.
