Gaps in the supermarket aisles, goods not being delivered, shortages of staff in care homes, eight-page customs documents – welcome to Brexit Britain.
Just as the economy starts to tick over again after the gruelling Covid-19 lockdown, the structural weaknesses left behind by Brexit are beginning to stare out at us from the empty shop shelves.
A perfect combination of leaving the European Union and locking down has left the UK facing a labour supply shortage and difficulties in sourcing materials and goods.
The problems have been typified by a lack of HGV drivers to deliver produce that has not been harvested because so few workers are available. This is not just a consequence of the pandemic.
The UK Government was told long before Brexit of the problems that were being stored up but did nothing.
Again, like the pandemic, like the evacuation of Afghanistan, this Tory Government only wakes up to a problem when it becomes a crisis.
With Covid quarantine measures and Brexit residence problems to overcome, European workers are not keen to return to a country which they feel has turned its back on them.
The focus on training and upgrading skills has been minimal and the attention to overcoming the customs and supply chain blockages negligible.
Labour’s Ed Miliband is right to point out that these problems will not somehow magically solve themselves.
Wages will inevitably rise to some extent to meet the demand for workers but there are more than 1.5million vacancies across the UK, with several of the hotspots in Scotland.
Meeting wages will be the rising cost of food and goods as supplies become stretched and demand for the festive market increases.
A perfect storm is being met by an incompetent government.
Answer needed
The barbaric murder of aid worker David Haines at the hands of brutal British terrorists who thought they could rule the world from the Syrian desert has not gone unpunished.
Those of the so-called Isis Beatles cell of murderers who have not been killed have been either captured abroad or are serving jail sentences.
The last of them, Alexanda Amon Kotey, admitted this week his guilt in conspiring to abduct and behead western hostages in live link from a federal court in Virginia.
He deserves his inevitable life sentence but he also owes the family of David Haines some settlement.
The Foreign Office and UK intelligence community must do their utmost to have Kotey listen and respond to the plea of Bethany Haines and disclose where her father’s body is.
