Brexit fears are being realised

Before the Referendum in June 2016, the Leave campaign caricatured the Remain campaign as Project Fear.

One fear was certainly realised overnight with sterling falling against the dollar and the euro by nine per cent and by mid October 2016 was 16 per cent lower.

So Fear in that case was reality before any date had even been set for a possible actual Brexit.

But who now is frenetically peddling Project Fear? It is the May Government of course. Over the last couple of weeks we have witnessed the following:

• On Monday we had the bizarre sight of an exercise to shift lorries from blocking up the M20 and M26 to blocking up the disused Manson airport.

We were told 150 lorries would take part; in fact only 89 lorries actually took part, but Dover and Eurotunnel together handle 5,750 lorries going to France or Belgium each day, let alone a similar number coming into the UK.

• Our Health Minister, Matt Hancock, proudly announcing on Newsnight that he had become the world’s biggest buyer of fridges – to store medicines in case they cannot get through from the rest of Europe post Brexit.

• Most extraordinary of all, that past master of disaster, our Minister for Transport, Chris Grayling, trying to defend his signing of a contract worth £14 million to provide additional ferry services from the port of Ramsgate.

He said he had done ‘due diligence’ but clearly failed to spot that the port needs serious dredging to accommodate suitable vessels which could not be done in time for March 29 and that the company, in its latest accounts, shows cash in hand of £799 and total assets of a mere £35,000.

Quite apart from its total lack of any trading experience.

All of this is happening now, while the Countdown to Brexit clock ticks seemingly inexorably on.

At the time of writing this letter on Monday, it showed 81 days and a few hours.