New: the queues at Dover are just a taster of what Brexit could bring, industry warns 1/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
`This kind of chaos, and this kind of delay, could easily be a presaging of what is to come,' says @Foodanddrinkfed's Ian Wright on @BloombergTV. `It's lifting the curtain a little on the chaos that could happen if it all goes horribly wrong.' 2/
Why could Brexit be worse? This week's chaos has been a short, sharp shock - temporary closure of one crossing with the EU, the French border. Brexit will be a structural change, affecting all ports at once, and creating customs checks indefinitely, says @RHADuncanB 3/ 
Remember, the govt's reasonable worst case scenario is 7,000-truck-long queues. What's happened this week in Dover has been bad, but it hasn't reached those levels 4/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
To be sure, there's lots of context which should mitigate early disruption. Much reduced freight levels in early January. Many EU hauliers simply not risking a trip to the U.K. for fear of being caught in queues, and so on 5/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Internally, civil servants joke that they're grateful the EU has given them a Brexit dry run. But they also admit this is smaller-scale than what they think could come - not on Jan 1, but potentially in the weeks that follow ends/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
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