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London, United Kingdom – Holiday cheer is in short supply in the UK, with fears about a new strain of the novel coronavirus, continued uncertainty about Brexit and a government ban on the holidays to limit further contagion.
Summing up the growing sense of pessimism, this week’s national newspapers covered their front pages with warnings that the UK was the “sick man of Europe” and called the chaos of late December a “jingle hell”.
“The country is not only fearful, but angry, and that is a dangerous combination,” Saurav Dutt, a 38-year-old author from London, told Al Jazeera. “With Brexit, there is a palpable feeling that people don’t really know what is going on.
“And there it is [also] true frustration at the risky, aimless, often illogical and reactive stance of the government when facing the pandemic ”.
Several countries have closed their borders to UK travelers due to growing global alarm over the new strain of the virus, leaving more than 1,500 trucks stranded in the south-east of the country, unable to cross into France and the European Union, and causing Supermarket warnings of impending food shortages.
According to Sainsbury’s, a major UK supermarket, lettuce could well run out, a warning that has sparked another round of panic buying.
Global travel bans and the sight of trucks loaded with Europe-bound goods piled up on UK roads “only add to the sense of separation” felt by many ahead of the impending break with their biggest trading partner and neighbor. nearby, Dutt said.
“The anger of the British at not being able to travel will only add to that,” he said.
As for the cancellation of Christmas, “it really saddens the end of the year and doesn’t bode well for 2021,” he said.
But some British sympathized with the officials, who face a challenge unprecedented in modern history.
“The facts are that there are viruses circulating and each government has to protect its citizens first and foremost,” Sacha Jacobsen, 42, told Al Jazeera.
Jacobsen, a Manchester marketing director, added that he felt the UK would emerge from the clutches of the pandemic “sooner than most” given the country’s initial mass vaccination campaign.
More than 500,000 people received a dose of the recently approved Pfizer-BioNTech jab as part of the immunization program, which began Dec. 8.
“The government has done what it could,” he said.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday that the pandemic was being “constantly defeated by an international response” in which the UK was playing a “full role”.
His government has been repeatedly accused of mishandling the pandemic, beginning with its decision to blockade the UK later than other European countries when it erupted across the continent in the spring.
The country’s total death toll from COVID-19 now stands at more than 67,000 people, the second highest in Europe, behind Italy.
Meanwhile, COVID continues to rise. The new strain, considered up to 70 percent more infectious, is sweeping the capital London and swaths of the surrounding southeast.
This growing caseload was the reason why Johnson withdrew his planned relaxation of the lockdown measures during the Christmas period at the eleventh hour, and instead imposed stricter restrictions on tens of millions of people.
To deepen the sense of uncertainty, talks on a trade deal between London and Brussels remain stalled.
Now both parties are quickly running out of time to avoid a messy divorce when the Brexit transition period comes to an end on December 31 and the UK exits the single market and the European Union customs union.
Many Britons were gloomy, disappointed and furious at the tumultuous end of a 12-month trial that has seen their country struggle to reposition itself on the world stage.
But at a press conference held at his Downing Street residence, Johnson tried to reassure his country, telling reporters that the government was working with the World Health Organization on the new strain of the virus.
And addressing the issue of the UK’s recent isolation, Johnson said he was coordinating with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, to unblock the UK’s trade flow with the EU as quickly as possible.
At press time, trucks parked on the M20, the highway that will eventually lead them to the Port of Dover and then to France, stretched for miles.
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