If a no-deal Brexit will cause water shortages and the return of the black market, panic is a rational response

There’s still a redacted paragraph in the Yellowhammer document. What on earth could lie behind those ominous blocks of black ink?

Ah. So that’s what Michael Gove meant by “bumps in the road” after no-deal Brexit. Food prices up. Electricity up. Lorries stuck in the channel ports for days on end. Riots. A “low” threat to running water. Immigration checks at Calais or Paris or European airports. Gibraltar blockaded virtually. Low income groups – that's the poor – hit hardest. Cod wars. Social care collapsing. Shortages of medicines. And the return of the black market! The 21st century spiv may be the abiding legacy of this short tragic Johnson government.

It’s difficult to know what to make of all this. The most offensive part, for me, is the blatant deception. It doesn’t feel right to have been lied to by our leaders. “Bumps in the road” sounded like a kind of tranquilliser for the anxious punters: a charming, cosy euphemism, as if we were all going on a jolly excursion to the countryside. (The irony being, of course, that all those truckers and holidaymakers won’t be going on any roads, bumpy or otherwise, once they meet French customs.)

Calling this a “reasonable worst case” now is a pathetic attempt to sugarcoat it. It is a contradiction in terms. Do they really take the public for fools? Want to treat us like silly children just because we can’t get our drugs? Because we are liable to panic?

Sometimes panic is a rational response. It is wrong to dress it up. It can be sugarcoated no longer. It will be awful; Brexit isn’t worth it.

There’s a redacted paragraph, too. What on earth could possibly lie behind those ominous blocks of black ink?

Much of this chaos will go on for years, if not decades, after a no-deal Brexit. More disruption to trade and travel will be a permanent feature of life.The roads will be forever bumpy – or blocked. We will permanently porter than we would otherwise be. That is because the government can only do so much to mitigate matters. It will not do the extra admin for businesses; it will not forever subsidise the extra costs. The Department for Business won’t take over car production from Honda, and Defra won’t be getting itself into the hill farming business. Boris Johnson won’t come round and stand in the endless queue at the Post Office for you so you can obtain your international driving permit.

And yet Yellowhammer doesn't even touch on the even bigger macroeconomic impact of a no-deal Brexit: the loss of hundreds of thousands of well-paid, skilled jobs in the car industry, in aerospace, farming, fisheries, the City, food and pharmaceuticals – to name just a few.

What about the tariffs on imports? The withdrawal of investment? The drop in the value of sterling? Higher inflation? Shortages of workers in the NHS or the potato fields?

What about tariffs on our exports? What will an officially estimated 5 per cent drop in national income do to wages and tax revenues and public service

There is much more to no-deal Brexit than this short, if terrifying, document suggests. No doubt specially spun “updates” will be produced, but the public is right to be fearful and sceptical about this huge propaganda exercise.

As for the censored prorogation papers, well, they really must be dynamite. It will need a court order to drag them out of government – and I believe they would expose lies directed at everyone from the Queen to Larry the Downing Street cat (“no plans for a car-hating dog to join the team – a worst case scenario”).

Imagine, if you can, how foul mouthed and insulting to the voters and contemptuous of the Palace and MPs that Dominic Cummings could potentially be – and then multiply it. And then perhaps throw in some casual racism about the French, Irish and Germans. Or maybe something truly disgusting about John Bercow.

These emails and WhatsApp messages must so bad, so embarrassing, so deplorable that they have to break the law to prevent us reading them.

No wonder Boris Johnson’s gang didn’t want parliament around. Who’d want to be accountable for this mess?