Post-Brexit fuel crisis: hardly any truck driver wants to go to Great Britain

The UK is struggling to attract badly needed tanker truck drivers from the European Union. As Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the BBC on Tuesday on the sidelines of the Conservative Conference in Manchester, the government had received only 127 applications for a special quota of work permits. This is less than half of the 300 special visas. Johnson contradicted Britain’s “Times” newspaper, which reported only 27 applications.

Johnson said the low number of orders was a “fantastic example of the problem” behind Britain’s fuel crisis. “Give us the names of the drivers you want to bring here and we’ll handle the visas,” the government told the freight forwarders. However, they did not name a sufficient number of candidates to fill the quota.

Army on duty

The army has been deployed in London and southern England since Monday to ease supply problems at petrol stations. Long queues form at gas pumps across the country for a good two weeks because gasoline doesn’t move from refineries to delivery points fast enough. The reason for this is the lack of truck drivers. This is why shelves remain empty in many supermarkets.

Critics see this as a tightening of immigration law after the country leaves the European Union. Johnson again rejected calls for a general relaxation of immigration rules.

“The supply chain problem is largely caused by the economic recovery,” he said. The shortage of drivers is a global problem. He promised that logistic companies will get the crisis under control soon. But he does not want to return to the “failed economic model” before Brexit, which was based on “low-wage” and “low-skilled” immigration.