British Conservative Party conference – Johnson underestimated the effects of Brexit

Solen, supporters of Boris Johnson rushed to the conference center in Manchester to rally around their prime minister. This party convention was meant to be a belated victory display after the Conservatives celebrated their December 2019 electoral victory last fall due to the pandemic by zooming in.

After all, they promised, after the elections they brought Brexit “once and for all”. This summer they also assumed there would be reason for new confidence after Covid-19 – after successful vaccination on the island, the end of all restrictions in July and a marked economic improvement in August. From the official opposition, with no charisma Chief of Staff Keir StarmerJohnson believes he has nothing to fear to this day.

The latest opinion polls on Sunday predicted the Conservatives would have a clear lead over Labour. However, conservatives are currently facing a difficult situation: in many stores there are gaps in the range of goods, and they are getting wider. Heating and fuel costs are rising even faster. Above all, the long queues of cars that have formed at countless gas stations since the last Thursday do not want to dissolve.

Buying panic and chaos

because that Loss of thousands of tanker driversWhich led to the temporary closure of gas stations, which led to panic buying and chaos. Despite government assurances that everything will be settled “very quickly”, the situation remains acute, especially in London and southeast England. Fear of fuel.

The army is supposed to go out on Monday with 100 cars and drivers because they want to signal they are ready to serve in Downing Street. Ministers have admitted, more meekly than before, that it “may take a few weeks” to get the problem under control. Even Rod Mackenzie of the British Freight Forwarders Association fears that one will have to wait a year for true normalization.

Under these circumstances, the government received angry reactions, and also granted 5,000 special visas to truck and tanker drivers from the European Union. But you need “ten times” that number of visas — designed for a long period of time, says McKenzie, president of the Freight Transport Association.

“You can’t pull truck drivers out of your hat.”

Sir Roger Gill, Conservative MP

Prime Minister Johnson himself declared again on Sunday that British shipping companies should no longer use cheaper foreign workers, but would have to train and hire British nationals after Brexit. But you can’t pull truckers out of your hat, Conservative Party chairman Sir Roger Gill has criticized.

His fellow party member, Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the House Defense Committee, groans the same way: “Just waiting for everything to return to normal at some point is not a strategy.” Other Conservative MPs, especially from the right in the party, are clinging to their hard Brexit for the time being. For them, as for Economy Minister Kwasi Koarting, the current bottlenecks are simply a painful “transition stage” on the way to a better time. However, they understand that this does not receive much sympathy among the population – because the situation in the country is starting to deteriorate everywhere.

Because it is not only the gasoline supply that is stagnating. Since Great Britain has a total of 100,000 truck and lorry drivers, and since the departure of the Europeans, thousands of workers have been affected in many areas, shops, shops and restaurants, but also large parts of the agricultural sector. Some crops cannot be brought in this year. Pigs may not be slaughtered because there are no qualified butchers. Poultry is being raised much less than it used to be – including one British Christmas Core numbers of turkeys have decreased dramatically.

Higher costs – lower social assistance

At the same time, the Conservatives, who represent the poorest regions, for example in the north of England, warn that there is outright panic among their voters due to the sharp rise in prices and heating costs, along with the systematic reduction in social assistance, the tax increases just outlined by Government and state end support jobs threatened by the epidemic.

Hundreds of thousands of Britons could be out of work as a result of these measures and millions could find themselves in serious financial trouble, warned Conservative MPs from former Labor constituencies, which fell into Conservative hands in 2019 in the wake of enthusiasm over Brexit. Boris Johnson cannot craft grand plans for a fairer Britain, while at the same time “pulling money out of the pockets of poor communities in northern England”, said MP Jake Perry.

Dominic CummingsLast year, he became Boris Johnson’s chief adviser and a gray reputation in government headquarters in the same century with critics. “It is clear that the government failed to take care of the supply problems we talked about in May 2020,” he said at the opening of the party conference.

Cummings advises his fellow countrymen to stock up on time and fill pantries – because Boris, his former boss, “certainly doesn’t understand what’s going on here.”

Posted today at 19:14

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