Shropshire Star comment: Forgetting how to run a country

Yes, that is another predicted consequence of Brexit, so get your bus journeys in now while you still have a chance.

According to former Stourbridge MP Lynda Waltho, director for the Midlands for the Confederation of Passenger Transport, bus drivers from Eastern Europe – particularly from Poland – are already quitting Britain and the bus and coach companies cannot find anybody to replace them.

The upshot of this is that on March 30, the day after the UK’s scheduled departure from the EU, bus services could grind to a halt, or at least be seriously disrupted.

Such a claim has to be held up to the light and examined. What proportion of bus drivers in our region are from Eastern Europe? Exactly how many have gone back? And what are the factors that have led British bus operators, who have hitherto successfully run services since the very advent of buses, to rely so completely on non-domestic labour that the services are allegedly unsustainable without them?

British bus companies of the past did not seem to have any problem.

If the dire warnings from Lynda Waltho, who stood unsuccessfully for the European Parliament, are correct, and British buses are about to stand idle, it would not just be down to Brexit but also down to a failure of strategic planning by bus and coach bosses.

She also points to an exodus of Eastern Europeans which will hit the hospitality industry.

What a strange post-Brexit world it will be, in which if the most spine-chilling predictions are right, there will be hundreds of thousands of job losses among British workers, while simultaneously various services will cease because vacancies cannot be filled by British workers.

Meanwhile, companies are saying they are storing goods because of fears of delays at the ports, particularly in the case of a no-deal Brexit.There is talk, too, of consumers stocking up on some items because they fear the worst.

That’s all we need now, a bit of very British panic-buying to leave the supermarket shelves bare.

The conclusion might be that after 46 years of EU membership the UK has forgotten how to run a country.

In which case, we’re going to have to learn all over again.