Thread by @MattCarr55

The #Kent lorry debacle was not caused by Brexit. But it is very Brexity. Why? Firstly, because it shows once again the lack of preparation that has become a hallmark of Brexit, and of this government in particular. Even before the new covid variant was officially announced

there were already lorries building up at the ports. It would have been obvious that France and other EU countries would want to close their borders off to travellers coming from UK who might carry the new covid variant.

Yet the U.K. did not liaise with the French beforehand as to how to prevent blockages, because a Brexit UK government would never do that with the foreign countries that have in effect become our imaginary enemies, especially the bloody French. Boney! Macron! Same thing!

Nor does our government care enough about food supplies, farmers produce, Just-in-Time supply lines, empty supermarkets - details are for losers. And they certainly didn’t care about the truckers who would inevitably be stranded, many of whom are foreign so, whatever...

So they just announced it, screwing the truckers the way they screwed millions of people who they’d promised could have their Christmas. And when the traffic queues built up to 20 miles, the PM and assorted ministers lied about the numbers and said it was all perfectly normal

Everything was under control, even when it wasn’t. Even when they knew the numbers they were quoting at Johnson’s pressers and tv studios were way short of the real figures. So very Brexit.

And now thousands of truckers are trapped in Kent, and may not get home for Christmas, and the government is not looking after them, because this government doesn’t look after anyone until it’s shamed into doing so

And all the time Farage, and assorted Tory MPs and Brexiters have been talking xenophobic drivel about EU ‘bullies’ who are ‘punishing’ us, and it’s just like WW2 again, and Brexiter Twitterati are whittering on about the ‘scum media’ who have invented the lorry crisis

Or they’re blaming migrants for the covid variant and warning about migrants sneaking into the country. And they’re using the chaos and misery at Dover to argue AGAINST an extension and FOR No Deal which will cause more misery, suffering, and shortages

And I have yet to hear a single government minister or a single one of these baying Brexit ‘patriots’ express any sympathy for the poor truckers sitting this out in Kent. For them, the crisis is only useful it can be used to spread hate.

In short, this crisis is as Brexity as it could possibly be, because Brexit is not an endpoint, but a process, and a way of thinking. And wherever you find it, it always exhibits the same incompetence, the same inhumanity, and the same nationalist victimhood.

Happy Xmas