The British public is in for a long winter of discontent thanks to Brexit chaos

Editorial: The attitude seems to be that because the people voted to leave the EU, they’re equally happy to volunteer for redundancies, animal cruelty, and shortages of food and medicines

With Brexit and a pandemic to contend with, this Christmas and new year may well be the toughest we have known since the war (Getty)

One of the few unalloyed benefits of leaving the European Union was supposed to be an improvement in the welfare of live animals for export. Yet even that seems now to be compromised. So much for a nation of animal lovers taking back control. Were it not for the even more pressing coronavirus crisis, the coming Brexit disaster would be at the top of the news agenda.

Such is the state of preparedness (or lack of it) for Britain’s as-yet-undefined Brexit that the government itself admits that poultry, for example, will die of neglect and decompose as the lorries carrying them to European markets are parked on the many acres of concreted-over land that used to be called Kent, the garden of England. That is probably not what Boris Johnson meant by an “oven-ready” deal. The Department for Transport envisages that the “emergency traffic measures”, a euphemism for chaos, will last until October 2021. Even that may be an underestimate. The assumption seems to be that British exports will somehow be able to find new ways to overcome border controls, tariff calculations and various checks on goods, people and vehicles. Yet nowadays we hear little about the once-promoted “trusted trader” and hi-tech solutions that were supposed to make Brexit on World Trade Organisation terms easy.