"(Bloomberg) -- Lines of cars snake from gasoline stations. Fights break out among angry motorists trying to get fuel. Grocery staples are out of stock on store shelves. A charity warns that doubling heating bills will force a million households to rely on extra blankets to stay warm.

This was supposed to be the year the U.K. broke free of the European Union and forged ahead as a buccaneering free trader, delivering the benefits of a new, confident “Global Britain” to workers and companies at home. Instead, that picture of Brexit utopia is looking more like a dystopia.

As Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party gathers at its annual conference this week, the promise of self-determination has given way to a foreboding sense of economic isolation.

A confluence of crises has forced the government to deploy soldiers to drive fuel trucks, energy suppliers to go out of business and panicked households to try and fill cupboards—all while Covid-19 is still rife.

The pound, meanwhile, has been trading like an emerging-market currency rather than from a steady Group of Seven country. The governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, even quipped whether a plague of locusts would be next to beset the U.K. He now has the task of figuring out how to raise interest rates to subdue inflation without choking the economy.

The Confederation of British Industry, the biggest business lobby, is urging Johnson to set up an emergency taskforce to deal with the supply shortages and cost of living. The country faces “a perfect inflationary storm” that could plunge the economy into a recession next year, according to Gavekal Research. Retail executives predict food prices will rise at an annual pace of 5% by the end of the year.

“The recovery is in a very fragile state,” said Karan Bilimoria, the CBI’s president. “The nightmare scenario is a ‘winter of discontent’,” he said, evoking the period in the late 1970s when strikes and shortages led to the downfall of the Labour government. “The basics not being available is what we’ve got to try and prevent.”

The immediate challenges facing the U.K. stem from the loss of a vital pool of labor after its transition out of the EU ended on Jan. 1. A dearth of truckers is raising fears not just about toys or turkeys for Christmas, but whether people will have enough fuel and food this winter.
....
Bloomberg Economics forecasts economic growth will slow to 1.3% in the fourth quarter from 1.6% in the previous three months. Although that still leaves the economy on course to expand 6.3% for the whole year, inflation is set to end the year above 3% and stay there until mid-2022.

The root of the U.K.’s outsized struggles are broader and come down to its dependence on trade, an asset before the pandemic that allowed for lean supply lines and championed by supporters of Brexit. That reliance now magnifies the damage from leaving the EU and Covid-19 disruption."

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/why-brexit-britain-isolated-vulnerable-040003057.html

On Monday, October 4, 2021 at 12:47:09 PM UTC-7, ltlee1 wrote:
> "(Bloomberg) -- Lines of cars snake from gasoline stations. Fights break out among angry motorists trying to get fuel. Grocery staples are out of stock on store shelves. A charity warns that doubling heating bills will force a million households to rely on extra blankets to stay warm.

Then, let them come to Central Valley California or Arizona, New Mexico, Texas,... where temperature goes over a hundred degrees...

>
> This was supposed to be the year the U.K. broke free of the European Union and forged ahead as a buccaneering free trader, delivering the benefits of a new, confident “Global Britain” to workers and companies at home. Instead, that picture of Brexit utopia is looking more like a dystopia.
>
> As Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party gathers at its annual conference this week, the promise of self-determination has given way to a foreboding sense of economic isolation.
>
> A confluence of crises has forced the government to deploy soldiers to drive fuel trucks, energy suppliers to go out of business and panicked households to try and fill cupboards—all while Covid-19 is still rife.
>
> The pound, meanwhile, has been trading like an emerging-market currency rather than from a steady Group of Seven country. The governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, even quipped whether a plague of locusts would be next to beset the U.K. He now has the task of figuring out how to raise interest rates to subdue inflation without choking the economy.
>
> The Confederation of British Industry, the biggest business lobby, is urging Johnson to set up an emergency taskforce to deal with the supply shortages and cost of living. The country faces “a perfect inflationary storm” that could plunge the economy into a recession next year, according to Gavekal Research. Retail executives predict food prices will rise at an annual pace of 5% by the end of the year.
>
> “The recovery is in a very fragile state,” said Karan Bilimoria, the CBI’s president. “The nightmare scenario is a ‘winter of discontent’,” he said, evoking the period in the late 1970s when strikes and shortages led to the downfall of the Labour government. “The basics not being available is what we’ve got to try and prevent.”
>
> The immediate challenges facing the U.K. stem from the loss of a vital pool of labor after its transition out of the EU ended on Jan. 1. A dearth of truckers is raising fears not just about toys or turkeys for Christmas, but whether people will have enough fuel and food this winter.
> ...
> Bloomberg Economics forecasts economic growth will slow to 1.3% in the fourth quarter from 1.6% in the previous three months. Although that still leaves the economy on course to expand 6.3% for the whole year, inflation is set to end the year above 3% and stay there until mid-2022.
>
> The root of the U.K.’s outsized struggles are broader and come down to its dependence on trade, an asset before the pandemic that allowed for lean supply lines and championed by supporters of Brexit. That reliance now magnifies the damage from leaving the EU and Covid-19 disruption."
>
> https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/why-brexit-britain-isolated-vulnerable-040003057.html