It has been less than a month since the UK left the single market and the customs union, and the result has been chaos.

Fishers are anchoring their ships and halting the catch because they can no longer sell their product in the EU. Produce is being left to rot because an enormous increase in paperwork means it cannot get to market quickly enough.

Hauliers are stuck in queues at the border or left stranded in the cold and wet in some bleak lorry park in Kent.

And even if they are one of the lucky ones who eventually get to the continent, their home-made sandwiches are confiscated since they do not comply with the new rules of UK/EU trade.

“Welcome to Brexit, sir”.

Welcome to Brexit indeed.

This is Brexit reality. The reality of trading with the EU from outside the EU. The reality brought about when the govt rushes a deal, agrees it on Christmas Eve, brings it into force of New Years’ Eve, & provides no-one with any time to prepare. And this reality bites.

We are told by Brexiteers that this is a price we must pay for our independence, but they always denied that there was any price to pay at all.

And they continue to deny it, deliberately creating a false narrative that flies in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

They claim that there is no border in the Irish Sea (Brandon Lewis), that trade under this new deal will flow more smoothly than ever before (Michael Gove), and that the current disruptions are just “teething problems” (Boris Johnson, George Eustice, Dominic Raab).

These are lies.

The truth is that much derided experts – customs and logistics professionals, business and industry leaders, trade associations, EU specialists, academics, and economists – were right.

They predicted all that is happening today, but Brexiteers chose to ignore them, even when they themselves knew that what the experts predicted was true. This was, and continues to be, pure politics.

They have always known that Brexit cannot be sold on a promise of sacrifice and hardship, the public simply do not care enough about the UK’s relationship with the EU for that to work.

So, they promised a land of milk and honey, and have delivered rotten fish and empty shelves. They think that the price is worth paying, but they want you to pick up the tab.

Given the dire situation currently facing us, one might assume that there would be a quick political backlash. Plenty hope that this will happen, but it is by no means guaranteed.

As severe as the impact of Brexit has already been and will continue to be in the weeks and months ahead, only specific parts of the country, and individuals in particular industries and professions are experiencing it firsthand.

Covid-19 restrictions aside, life for most of us continues as normal. And for many, unless they see it, or feel it for themselves, the consequences of Brexit will remain abstract...

...an image of queuing lorries that seems no more relevant to daily life than the hundreds of other pictures we see each day; stories of empty shelves when shelves in the local shop are full; or news of job losses that seem indistinguishable from Covid-19 related redundancies.

While the pain of Brexit is unevenly spread across the country, with a minority bearing the lion’s share of the suffering, politics in the UK may remain largely unaffected, with three noteworthy exceptions.

Kent is at the frontline. If you live in Dover, Folkstone, or Ashford, Brexit disruption is plain to see, and...

...it comes after much valued green space was tarmacked to make way for new lorry parks, travel routes were repeatedly disrupted as govt scrambled to prepare for potential no-deal Brexits, &...

...the Kent Access Pass was introduced to regulate freight travelling into the county, effectively putting a border around the Garden of England for hauliers.

All these decisions were made with little or no consultation. They were imposed on Kent via government decree.

Kent may have voted to leave, but this is hardly what “taking back control” should look like, and it is hard to imagine that growing discontent in the county will only express itself in letters to the local papers, and not at the ballot box as well.

But do not bet your house on Kent turning against Brexit. Given the county’s voting record, it is just as likely that it will double down and give Nigel Farage’s new political project its first electoral success if it runs candidates in the upcoming local elections

Kent may prove to be an outlier, or it may be the laboratory in which the politics of post-Brexit discontent in England are formed.

In Scotland, things will look very different. There, all the disruption, cost, and pain (for Scottish fishers in particular) play right into the hands of the Scottish National Party.

Short of the SNP imploding under the strain of its own infighting, it will win a majority when Scotland goes to the polls later this year.

That majority is only likely to get bigger as the harsh realities of Brexit continue to play out, and the larger that majority, the more overwhelming the SNP’s mandate to seek a second referendum on Scotland’s independence.

However, while it remains the right of the government in London to decide whether a referendum will be held, there will be no second vote.

The current government vehemently opposes Scottish independence, but the only strategy it has developed for preventing it is denying the Scottish people the right to vote on this matter ever again.

This approach is not sustainable if support for the SNP grows. Such intransigence will not only prompt a further deterioration in relations between London and Edinburgh but will also serve to increase support for independence.

Under this Conservative government we face a stand-off between an English nationalist party and a Scottish nationalist party, and when nationalism becomes the dominant political ideology in a state made up of multiple nations, that state is on the pathway towards breaking up.

And then there is Northern Ireland, where Brexit is proving to be the defining political moment for a generation. The Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland was a necessity. Without it, the continuing absence of a hard border on the island of Ireland could not be guaranteed.

However, its effect is to put a border in the Irish Sea. The Protocol has fundamentally reconstituted NIre’s relationship with GB, and it has created a powerful incentive for Northern Irish businesses to pivot away from the mainland and look south for econ opportunities.

New paperwork, checks, and red tape that are now being applied to the movement of goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland may, with experience, become easier to manage. However, they will not go away...

...and moving goods south, to be sold in the single market, will always look more attractive by comparison. Business and personal links between north and south will deepen as a result.

Pressure to improve & build new transport links will grow as entrepreneurs try to exploit NIre’s privileged access to the single market, and if these links are built, they will bring the island of Ireland closer together, with its peoples and economies increasingly intertwined.

Whether or not all this will lead to a border poll (the mechanism included in the Good Friday Agreement that creates a pathway towards a united Ireland) only time will tell. One thing is certain though, Northern Ireland will never be the same again.

So where do we go from here? The enormity of the challenges that we face can appear overwhelming, but that does not mean that there is nothing that can be done.

Instead, it means that government must stop denying that Brexit is causing economic pain and start developing a coherent plan to repair the damage. And it means reconstituting the country because it clearly is not working in its current form.

On the economic front, government must fully understand what impact leaving the single market and customs union is having on all sectors.

It should speak to business and to experts, and even more importantly, listen to them.

It shld collect as much data as possible & undertake a granular analysis of everything that it has learnt, since only when it fully understands what is happening on the ground can government develop an effective strategy to deal with the many problems that are emerging.

If it does not do this, it risks spending the remainder of this Parliament haphazardly applying plasters to a hemorrhaging economy.

Having campaigned on a promise to “take back control”, government should also give substance to this slogan. This will mean giving up on its centralizing instincts and delivering a democratic revolution in the UK.

Power should be brought as close as possible to the people.

Taking back control should mean championing devolution, not talking it down; empowering local authorities to deliver, not what government tells it to, but what local voters elected them to...

...taking power out of London, not consolidating it in the hands of the executive...

...& sharing power in London, by bringing the devolved admins into the tent, giving them ownership of national decisions, and creating more cooperative and consensual politics as part of an effort to reconstitute the Union.

None of this is easy but doing nothing is not an option.

If govt is unable to recognise the scale of the challenges, unwilling to take the necessary steps to address these, & too focused on exploiting Brexit divides for its short-term gain, it risks doing little more than presiding over the decline, ultimate disintegration, of the UK.