Britain cut off: What other countries are saying as UK struggles with Covid and Brexit crises

European neighbours look on in horror as Britain concludes ‘a catastrophic year’, writes Rory Mulholland

World’s apart: the coronavirus ‘has yet again exacerbated’ Brexit, wrote one German newspaper (AFP via Getty Images)

If ever there was a time for European media to trot out that old, and fake, headline about “fog in the Channel – continent cut off” it was now, after a new coronavirus variant supercharged the looming Brexit chaos. 

But the continent’s newspapers and commentators simply played it straight, letting the awful facts speak for themselves. 

“In the United Kingdom, a coronavirus mutation concludes a catastrophic year,” said the grim headline in France’s Le Monde, which wondered if France should now ramp up its own restrictions to keep the new variant at bay. 

“United Kingdom cut off from continental Europe,” was the headline in left-wing Libération about the almost Europe-wide travel ban after the discovery of the variant that is up to 70 per cent more infectious than the original strain. 

The daily newspaper recalled that less than two weeks ago, Briton Margaret Keenan became the first person in the world to be vaccinated against the virus. Now the possible light at the end of the tunnel glimpsed back then has been all but snuffed out, it said. 

France has banned lorries carrying freight from the UK, causing chaos in Folkestone, Kent, where queues of trucks began backing up over the weekend to gain access to the Eurotunnel whenever it reopens. 

“The island is cordoned off,” said Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “Endless traffic jams at the ports and at the Eurotunnel, jammed warehouses and worries about empty fruit and vegetable shelves: ten days before Brexit D-Day, the coronavirus has yet again exacerbated the situation,” it wrote. 

The mass-circulation Bild newspaper focused on traumatic scenes at German airports over the weekend upon the arrival of passengers who had rushed to get out of Britain before the travel ban kicked in. It quoted official sources as saying that at least ten infected people had been on board the flights that landed at various Germany airports. 

“‘Like an end of the world movie’ – passengers describe panic as some Irish left stranded in London,” wrote the Irish Independent of Irish citizens’ scrambling to get out of the UK before the travel ban came into effect. 

The Irish Times for its part linked the latest twist in the Covid crisis to Britain’s stumbling talks with the EU to reach a post-Brexit trade deal. 

“Failure to reach a deal would cloud the prospects for a post-Covid recovery in 2021,” said the paper. That is what looks increasingly likely after the prime minister, Boris Johnson, rejected demands for an extension to the EU transition period, saying he would keep his promise and leave on the last day of the year. 

Belgium was one of the first countries to impose the travel ban from or to the UK at the weekend. Its daily newspaper Le Soir wrote “the UK on Monday finds itself on the verge of chaos and more and more isolated”. 

“Passengers of ferries from the UK are no longer welcome here,” was the blunt analysis from De Telegraaf newspaper in the Netherlands. Boris Johnson said over the weekend that he had no choice but to put much of the country into a Christmas lockdown because the new strain of the virus was spreading rapidly. 

European media on the whole avoided the most obvious cliché headlines along the lines of the United Kingdom being the “sick man of Europe”. 

That particular old chestnut was left to a British tabloid, the Daily Mirror, which had it splashed across its front page.