The aftershocks of Brexit – and Covid – may give Keir Starmer the chance to make his case

Labour doesn’t want to mention one of the causes of shortages of everything from HGV drivers to blood tests, writes John Rentoul

Keir Starmer: government is slow and incompetent – but don’t mention Brexit (PA)

Doctors have been ordered by the NHS to stop non-urgent blood tests until the middle of next month, Shaun Lintern, The Independent’s health correspondent, reports. First there were a few gaps on supermarket shelves, the next thing we know the health service is in trouble.

The causes of the shortage of glass tubes for blood tests are complicated. Becton Dickinson, the manufacturer, said increased global demand, “UK border challenges” and a shortage of raw materials were all to blame. In other words, it looks as if the twin effects of the coronavirus pandemic and Brexit are continuing to work their disruption through society.

We need glass tubes for the vaccines, and the border checks imposed by Brexit are creating problems for the supply of everything from milkshakes to medical equipment.

This is how the vaccine effect on politics is wearing off: Boris Johnson gained approval from the British public for the early and efficient delivery of vaccines, but this good start raised expectations of a return to normal, of life going back to how it was before the pandemic. Instead, significant parts of “normal life” are worse.

The NHS backlog is so huge that the numbers waiting for treatment, whether on an official waiting list or not, amount to nearly one in five of the entire population. Instead of gearing up to start clearing the backlog, the health service seems to be facing capacity problems at every turn. Cancelled blood tests are only one vivid example.

The service is constrained by staff shortages, caused by coronavirus, pandemic burnout and Brexit. The next thing will be a shortage of care workers making it harder to discharge vulnerable patients.

This will all have political consequences. The median voter was pleased about the vaccines but other countries have caught up and the NHS now seems to be falling behind. The median voter may have voted to leave the EU, and may not accept that Brexit is partly responsible for the lorry driver shortage, but he or she will blame the government if private-sector Nando’s can’t get its chicken.

Which is a problem for Johnson and therefore an opportunity for Keir Starmer. Last year, when the prime minister seemed to be handling the pandemic badly, the Labour leader found an echo in public opinion for the case he was building against the government, that it was slow to act and incompetent when it did so.

Now that the vaccines are yesterday’s story, expect those themes to be developed again. It was notable, for example, that Becton Dickinson, the glass tube maker, alerted the NHS to supply problems last month, and indeed Steve Powis, NHS England’s medical director, issued his instruction to GPs to stop non-urgent blood tests more than two weeks ago. It is hard to blame Sajid Javid, the health secretary, for the problem, although no doubt Labour can accuse him of a lack of urgency in dealing with it.

For an opposition party, attacking the government for being slow and incompetent is a pretty straightforward business, especially on a subject – the NHS – on which Labour has a huge folkloric advantage.

When the immediate crisis in Afghanistan is over, these are likely to be Labour’s autumn themes. One of the complicating factors for Starmer, however, is Brexit. He doesn’t want to blame our departure from the EU for shortages, whether of glass tubes or HGV drivers, because that would give the Conservatives the chance to rally Leavers by reminding them that Starmer tried to overturn their vote.

That explains some of Labour’s contortions as it tries to criticise the government for the “chaos hitting supply chains”. Seema Malhotra, a shadow business minister, this week blamed the Conservatives’ “failure to keep their promise to cut red tape for businesses, which are struggling with more paperwork and higher costs”.

That additional paperwork has been generated by EU border checks, but the only time Malhotra mentioned the word “Brexit” was when she called on ministers to “take action to deliver on the promise of post-Brexit Britain”.

There will be demands from some of the party’s grassroots at next month’s Labour conference for the shadow cabinet to take a more explicit line against the government over Brexit, on the grounds that it has already proved to be a disaster.

There is an argument for such an approach that might be called the Jeremy Corbyn theory: that voters respond to a politician who believes in a cause, even if the cause itself is divisive. Starmer, most of his shadow ministers and most Labour activists strongly believe that Brexit was a mistake, but I think they are probably right to avoid “banging on about Europe”, as David Cameron, a moderately successful leader of the opposition, once put it.

Instead, as the aftershocks of Brexit and the pandemic cause inconvenience and worse, Labour will berate ministers for being too slow, and for incompetently burdening businesses with mysterious “red tape”.