They've also made it clear in recent weeks that it is up to individual businesses to be ready for January. The government will not be held accountable for anything going wrong, as they've said businesses have had a year to plan for this now and everything should be in place. Even though we're still receiving drips of info ourselves suggesting some big changes to product labelling in January.
The UK government keeps sending us reminders that we have to be prepared for Brexit and the new rules that they have not decided on. An ex-army buddy I know runs an airfreight export agency. He called the Department for Business and asked what the new rules were. The girl there asked for his post-code and said that he was in luck. She found someone in his area that could provide him with all the answers.
She gave him the name of his own export agency.
I don't think they'll go for an extension. This would be seen as a climb down, unless they can use COVID as a delay.
He's done U-turns on just about everything else! A U-turn on Brexit would hardly surprise me.
Johnson has painted himself into a corner. With a collection of very ineffectual ministers flopping haplessly about, UK Plc is nowhere near ready for Brexit, full, Teresa May, partial or, well, of any sort.
Felixstow container port is breaking down as consumers and wholesalers stockpile. Trucks are backing up NOW.
Container ships are being turned away, told that the entire port is ten days behind schedule. Containers are being diverted to Rotterdam, containers have to be reshipped to smaller ports in the UK. More delay.
That is what is happening today!
Now add Brexit. Even a Teresa Brexit could cause a breakdown at the ports.
The economy is on a knife-edge and could tip over into a full-blown depression at the slightest whiff of trouble. Johnson may not be the sharpest of minds but even he realises that much.
The only viable vaccine needs a massive infrastructure of -80C containers and could only be with us in months, not weeks.
Christmas of empty shops and empty pockets could cause civil unrest. If the rich get even richer and the poor become desperate, even the meek and mild English start to throw stuff at shop windows.
Everywhere Johnson looks, he sees dark clouds. Scotland is about to have an election and the pressures for independence are growing exponentially. NI is getting restless and any talk of borders between rest-UK or RoI will cause trouble.
Johnson does not want to go down in history as the PM who broke up the United Kingdom. That is the one thing he is trying to avoid. THAT is the real reason Cummings and his cohorts had to go.
Cummings was the hate figure, the Golom of this government and the one person that would have done everything to prevent super-soft Brexit or an extension. Cummings has probably done more to further the cause of Scottish independence than a whole army of SNP volunteers!
The EU team knows all this and is getting ready for a very soft Brexit or for an extension. Or possibly some bodge in between those two options.
