Boris Johnson’s attempts to drown out concerns about the future show we’re a long way from the sunlit uplands

There’s something comfortingly familiar about a Ryanair spat with the CAA until you delve into the cause: Brexit. James Moore reports

Covid-19 has created a border queue rehearsal for Brexit (AFP/Getty)

At the end of a hellish year there was something almost comfortingly familiar about a row breaking out between Ryanair and the Civil Aviation Authority.

But it turns out this is a fairly serious spat, resulting in the low-cost carrier cancelling 12 domestic and international routes.

The two are so regularly fighting about something or other it almost conveyed the feeling of a normality we used to know. Almost.

A little digging demonstrated that this is not your typical Ryanair-CAA row concerning refunds or whatever. At its core is one of 2020’s twin horror stories, specifically the non-Covid related nasty known as Brexit.

The Dublin-based airline, which has a UK subsidiary so it can operate here after the government has thrown up its Brexit wall around the country, complained that the CAA had introduced a bunch of new rules just days before the transition period is due to end. Sound familiar?

No, no, no, said the CAA, Ryanair wanted to use leased, foreign-owned aircraft for its UK operations and that will not do at all.  

You know how this one goes: it’s his fault, no, it’s her fault. Well screw you guys, I’m going home to sulk.

It did rather look like Ryanair was doing the sulking here but for maybe the first time ever I found myself feeling a certain sympathy for the business.

Like so many others, it found itself smack in the middle of the UK government’s determination to make life as difficult as possible for as many people as possible.

This issue has, remember, only come to the fore because the rules are changing and no one’s sure what rules will operate and when. No one’s really sure about anything apart from the fact that Boris Johnson & Co are making a spectacular mess of it all.  

This particular spat is just one among many that is contributing to the huge pulsating ball of puss Brexit has become.

It speaks volumes that while businesses grapple with mountains of paperwork, bureaucracy and straight up bulls**t,  Johnson and his transport secretary Grant Shapps were laughing when asked a question about the impact of no deal.

It made them look a bit like a pair of foppish 17th century aristos laughing at the Black Death.

Similarly tasteless government types and their lickspittles have taken to suggesting that the Covid-created queues of lorries in Kent mean that Britain will be ready for no deal.

We’ve had the dry run, and it’s been terrible, but at least we know we can do it all over again when we’re gouging ourselves instead of being gouged by the virus, just with extra taxes and tariffs.

It’s the sort of dystopian nightmare I last experienced when I was having poppy fields full of morphine pumped into my veins after nearly losing my life in a road accident.

Except with this one, every time I think phew, that’s the worst it can get, Johnson has descended so deep into the earth that he’s got to the magma I realise that no, no he hasn’t. There are lower depths to which he can yet sink and take the economy with him.

I sometimes wonder whether it’s actually him in No 10 these days or just a simulation created by Siri so he can put his feet up. Would there really be any difference?

Hey BoriSiri, what do we do when the manufacturers all pack up and go? “We’ll prosper mightily.”

BoriSiri, how about when the fruit is rotting in the fields because your government doesn’t want foreigners picking it like they used to? “We’ll prosper mightily.”

BoriSiri, why are the shelves at my local supermarket half-empty and why’s the price of what’s there making my eyes water? “We’ll prosper mightily.”

And so on.

Back to Ryanair, which is where we got started. Let’s be honest, who’s flying right now? No one wants to see planes from plague island landing at their airports. The row is a lot less consequential than it might be were we not in the middle of a pandemic. There’s time for it to be sorted out, and it probably will be in the end. These things usually are.

Trouble is, some of the other problems created for this country by BoriSiri Johnson and his wretched government are going to prove an awful lot more challenging.