Now ports face supply disruption – the government has to get on top of these mounting issues

Editorial: Pandemic-related supply issues are not unique to the UK but we’re the only ones to have imposed trade sanctions on ourselves during a time of unprecedented economic dislocation

(Dave Brown)

The latest disruption to hit the UK is container ships – full of toys and other Christmas-related goods – being diverted away from Felixstowe to dock on the continent because there is no storage space left.

The situation is “improving”, according to Conservative Party chair Oliver Dowden, who has suggested that people should shop as they normally would for Christmas – but more delays, and more gaps on the shelves, are not what Britain needs. The problem now is that the labour shortages at the root of many of the problems in the economy are not going to be solved this winter, or potentially for a number of years to come.

It could become a semi-permanent fact of economic life. For example, if the lorry-driver shortage is ameliorated by attracting workers from similar occupations, then that will merely lead to fresh problems elsewhere – local authority refuse-truck drivers, for example, enticed away like Premier League stars with big transfer fees from the hauliers. Training new staff takes time, and in any case, there are simply not enough young Britons joining the labour force, or older ones coming out of retirement, to satisfy the needs of what was once a dynamic economy.

Using machinery, automation and AI to replace human workers also takes time – and may not create many new jobs of the type needed, or in the places needed. Migration was not a lever that was lazily pulled by businesses “drunk on cheap labour”, as ministers now argue, but a method by which a flexible economy could adjust to constantly changing shortages and surpluses of workers in every occupation across the vast European single market. It was self-regulating: during recessions, either in the economy as a whole or in particular sectors, workers could move from sector to sector as required. It was of mutual benefit, because skilled British workers, from architects to bricklayers, could find work on the other side of the Channel, should they need or desire it.

The loss of free movement is a loss to Britain in all sorts of ways, and a crude, bureaucratic points-based visa system is no substitute for a free market (as Conservatives used to believe). Productivity may well go up, eventually, but there will be fewer jobs to go round, more unemployment in the longer run, and less “levelling up”. The UK economy will grow more slowly than in the past, and be smaller, as a result of a permanently smaller labour force, the International Monetary Fund now predicts. The UK economy will still be smaller in three years, because of the effects of Covid-19 and Brexit, than it was pre-pandemic. That, in turn, means lower tax revenues and poorer public services. In short, Britain will be poorer, and feel shabbier. Such is the price of Brexit.

Of course, it is fair to acknowledge that Britain is hardly alone in the world in suffering from problems. A global shortage of semiconductors will have similar effects in Birmingham, Alabama as in Birmingham, England. Everything from new cars to fridges is affected by the shortage of the ubiquitous chip, and by all the other distortions wreaked by Covid.

Brexit Britain, though, is unique in having decided to impose trade sanctions on itself during a time of unprecedented peacetime economic dislocation. The world looks on, and wonders – as should the British – how and why it ended up in such a state.