Consequences of Brexit: England’s garden degenerates into a toilet

Kent has always been proud of the “Garden of England” designation. In contrast to the industrial north, the southeastern English county was on the sunny side of the nation. Fruit plantations, hop fields, and beautifully manicured rose gardens were the epitome of the region between the hills of London and the chalky cliffs of Dover, though of course there were always lucrative businesses in Kent.

This winter, however, two shadows will fall in the southeast corner of the British Isles. One is the virus. Kent has several Covid “hot spots”. To the outrage of all those parts of the region with few cases, the entire county has been classified by the government at Level 3, the highest level of danger. While restaurants, pubs and even sports fields may reopen in neighboring London this week, Kent must continue to abide by stricter rules.

In the column with no alternative

The second shadow that falls on Kent, of course, could bother the region for much longer. Driving on the M20, the main motorway from London to Dover, you can get an idea of ​​what to expect in Kent. Mobile concrete barriers are hastily installed to regulate the flow of traffic. There, where work is being done, the M20 is closed for days, traffic is diverted onto small rural roads. In a traffic jam like this, you can get stuck for hours. EvasivemeterThere are no opportunities.

In the hamlets, where one moves between heavy trucks at pedestrian crossing, in front of the houses there are people shaking their heads. They would like to do what they are still allowed to do: buy their Christmas tree at Hernewell Farmshop or order a turkey from Spar in West Malling. Instead, they can barely cross the street due to the endless caravan in the city center.

The reason for this is, of course, the UK’s withdrawal from the internal market and the EU customs union at the end of the year, and the uncertainty about whether an agreement with the Europeans will still be possible. Even if that were the case, new border controls would be required. The consequences would be long lines of trucks on the way to the Eurotunnel in Folkestone or to the ferry terminal in Dover.

8 kilometers of traffic jam during test run

In the worst case, Minister Michael Gove, responsible for Brexit preparations, has admitted that you have to go with one «7000 truck daily traffic jam» calculate. 12,000 rolls everyday Towards the English Channel. The uncertainty has prompted the government to take a series of emergency measures such as concrete barriers along the M20. Even a test of new border controls by French border officials in Folkestone and Dover a few days ago resulted in one in a few hours. 8– Kilometers of traffic jams.

To avoid a total blockage of the continent’s great commercial artery, Minister Gove recently devised a “pass for Kent”, which should help speed up customs clearance. Freight forwarders across the kingdom are said to be forced to gather all the customs documents they will need in the future before leaving. Driving through Kent without a permit will become a crime from January. This move has drawn bitter comments. Clearly, opponents of Brexit scoff that the demarcation of Europe is beginning to give way to borders in the UK itself. Boris Johnson’s Brexiteers would not only have accepted controls between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in which the EU must be involved according to the exit treaty. Now there should even be borders within England: Kent will become a special police-supervised sector on the EU front.

Drivers may have to pause for days before receiving the green light to continue.

Meanwhile, other contingency plans have raised concerns in the “Garden of England.” If the backwater becomes dangerous and blocks other streets and cities, such as the old cathedral city of Canterbury, trucks will head from London along Kent’s north shore to a remote area, according to plan. There, drivers may have to pause for a few days before getting the green light to continue to Dover, 30 kilometers away.

In recent years, when negotiations with the EU repeatedly threatened to fail, the government kept this special site in reserve. The site is the disused Manston Provincial Airport, which is still proudly adorned with the name “Kent International Airport”. Nothing has happened here for six years. The entrance portals of the airport building are firmly closed. The parking lots where passengers once parked their cars are empty and deserted. Access to the slopes is still blocked. A security guard who comes from your house to the door can go «unfortunately do not comment »on what was planned.

A sign with a truck and the word “Dover” clearly marks the entrance to the site. Inside you have red–White warning cones are placed to show trucks the way to parking spaces. 4000 litersKwAnd if more is needed, the space should be able to accommodate. Something like that is “unreasonable” for drivers. If, for example, there is a Covid outbreak in Manston’s Brexit Lorry Park, help would hardly be possible, local politicians warn.

Above all, however, locals fear that an endless train of trucks on the single-lane highway from Manston to Dover will make their lives hell. Ambulances, which in fact regularly circulate on the street with flashing lights, would no longer pass. The way to school would be blocked and driving to work and shopping would be impossible. The responsible Manston district councilors “were never in favor of this type of airport use,” complains council chairman Rick Everitt. Government secrecy prevented any planning at the district level. There is a threat of “falling under the wheels.”

Downstairs in Dover, 62 per cent of whom voted to leave the EU in 2016, people fear the consequences of the looming ‘hard Brexit’ one way or another, with or without a deal. Passersby on Dover’s central Biggin Street, getting carried away with the conversation, either lament it got this far or defiantly pretend “it won’t be that bad.” In the port city, of all places, which is the most important ferry connection on the continent, anti-European instincts have remained strong: hIn addition to the reality of intensive trade with Europe, there is a need for isolation combined with a feeling of national superiority.

Not far from Folkestone, the “Battle of Britain” monument is a reminder of the heroic air battles over Kent that were used to hold off the enemy eighty years ago. Now there is a growing fear that truckers around the world could destroy the “Garden of England” in a much more prosaic way. Even now, after the first traffic jams, there are increasing reports that bottles filled with urine and plastic are being used more and more in parking lots and on the roads.secondyou can find bags with excrement. As part of its emergency measures, the government has agreed to install mobile toilets. Earlier in the week, an anti-Brexit protest group led by businessman Peter Cook ironically changed the traditional signs welcoming visitors to Kent on the access roads to the “Garden of England” with stickers. “Welcome to Kent, England’s Bath” is the motto there. “It’s only going to get a lot worse,” warns Cook’s group. “The people here are fed up.”

Brexit voters certainly weren’t expecting what would happen on their streets. Typical of the dilemma in which the south east of England finds itself so close to final Brexit is a small rural patch near the M20, the London-Dover axis, beyond the town of Ashford. In Sevington’s 900-year-old church neighborhood, with its weathered headstones, horses grazing peacefully behind the fence, and crows squawking over the trees, there is a row of small, almost forgotten farms. Here and there the Union Jack stands at the entrance to the garden. Or the flag of England, with the St.-Georgs Cross. This was always a fertile country for Brexit. Here they wanted to preserve what they thought was England. I wanted to protect the idyll.

A gigantic new customs

Immediately behind the farms and the church, however, to the horror of the residents, a huge area is being excavated, which the state required this summer without warning. A gigantic new customs office is being built there, which in turn will accommodate thousands of trucks for an unlimited period of time. Cranes, powerful excavators, workers in yellow protective clothing are working on the site. The first Mammut rooms are emerging in which the cleaning will take place. Everything should be ready by the middle of next year.

Until then, London wants to allow EU trucks to enter the country without major controls to avoid chaos in at least one direction. Even at the last minute, additional parking spaces will be created in other parts of the country and more ferry ports will be expanded as alternatives to Dover. Of course, no one can say whether the situation will be mastered at the beginning of the year. In any case, Kent will be the first county to experience Brexit.

Posted: Dec 1, 2020, 8:42 pm