Anything but Brexit? How about ‘all about Brexit’?

Get ready. The Tory conference this week will heap blame on ABB, Anything But Brexit, for the country’s current predicament.

There are shortages worldwide, we will be assured. Our EU neighbours are also suffering from a lack of lorry drivers and broken supply lines. They too are feeling the ravages of Covid-19 and long-term problems regarding a lack of workers.

Not according to my chum near Nantes who sent me a picture of groaning supermarket shelves. The same, says a pal living in the countryside further down the coast, outside Bordeaux – her shops are stocked to the heavens and there are no queues at garages.

For Italy, as well, says her daughter, back from touring Milan, Turin and the Lakes. True in Barcelona, says someone else, no problems anywhere. Two people, in different parts of Germany, say they have been there for weeks now and there are no empty shelves, everything is being delivered on time.

Let’s be clear, there is one reason above others for this mess and it is Brexit. Boris Johnson and his troops will maintain other factors are to blame. Nonsense. Yes, Covid-19 has not helped. But ask yourself this: if Covid had occurred without Brexit would we still be lining up for petrol, would our pubs and restaurants be forced to close because they do not have the staff, would there be gaping holes in our stores, would crops lie rotting in the fields and orchards because there is no one to pick them?

It’s not ABB but AAB: All About Brexit.

The businesspeople I know cannot get labour. It’s not to do with Covid. The UK is heavily vaccinated; sure, there are cases of folk having to isolate because they’ve tested positive but that is not responsible.

Neither is the crisis affecting only particular sectors. Unskilled, skilled, there’s no difference. City firms are crying out for more workers, they’re pleading to be allowed to bring them in from, guess where, the EU, on short-term visas. Tech programmers are similarly missing. Again, they want to fill the vacancies from our former partners, encouraging former employees to return or others to come afresh – whatever, they don’t mind, provided the gaps are plugged. What they don’t know is that we, in the UK, do not possess enough people with the right amount of expertise, not in the numbers they require.

Tim Martin, the Brexit-supporting boss of JD Wetherspoon, is calling on the government to launch a visa scheme for EU workers to help pubs and restaurants recruit more staff. Meanwhile, ministers are preparing to let 5,000 truckers in from the EU to assist with the shortfall. That begs the question: if this issue is EU-wide, as they claim it is, why then are they so confident of recruiting 5,000 from the EU?

According to the Office for National Statistics, more than 200,000 EU citizens left the UK last year. Britain fared worse than many nations in the pandemic and those who left were able to find employment in their home country. At the same time, we’ve made it much harder for foreigners to return to the UK, demanding that those who do not have settled status need a visa to work, live or study.

It’s true that lorry drivers leaving because they’re fed up with working conditions has contributed to the shortage of deliveries, hitting petrol pumps and shops. Covid will have made some re-evaluate their lives and prefer a change. But thanks to Brexit and the block on the free flow of people, they cannot be easily replaced. We’re stuck, marooned, an island with an economic disaster largely of our own making.

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Of course, as the Tories gather at Manchester that is not how it will be perceived. ABB, Anything But Brexit, will be the message.

There are some, however, who acknowledge Brexit is the component that puts us in a weaker position than the EU and elsewhere, which explains why you’re seeing fights breaking out on our garage forecourts, why it’s our stores that lost their supplies of mineral water, why it’s our bars and restaurants that are shut, why it’s our produce that remains unharvested. They claim that this is for the national good, that it’s a positive of Brexit, that EU staff forced wages down because they were prepared to work for less, that Brits will take up the slack and if needs be, retrain, thus making for a stronger, more balanced economy, one that is not so reliant on imported workers.

To which the reply must be, really? One pub landlady I spoke to said she could open only on certain days because she was short of staff. The French and Poles she relied on had gone. She then acknowledged that if she paid her workers more, she might attract locals, reach a full complement and not have to close. Ah, she said, she could not do that because then she would have to put up the prices of her drinks and food and we would not be prepared to pay higher prices.

As for the notion that retraining is easily achieved, it’s not a short-term or even medium-term fix. Show me the training programmes, teachers, examiners. These things do not occur as if by magic. They require careful planning and they need money.

In Manchester, the Tory delegates may wonder why it is taking far longer to get a drink or a meal than the last time they were in town, why there are signs all over advertising job vacancies. Instead of being instructed to spread the word that it’s down to ABB with lots of vague reasons, there is only one answer: All About Brexit, AAB. It’s why the replenished, not-in-crisis EU is laughing at us.