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meIt was only a matter of time. Trump’s rallying cry to “build a wall,” so concise, so quotable, has crossed the pond. Now we can build our own wall. In Kent. In January, we will regain control of our borders in triumph, something that Michael Gove has wholeheartedly embraced, announcing this week that truckers will need a “Kent Access Permit” to enter the county beginning January 1. So basically a passport.
The de facto border has been framed as the answer to the anticipated chaos, or in official parlance, the “reasonable worst-case scenario”, when the UK leaves the single market next year, including queues of up to 7,000 trucks in Kent. That’s about 100 miles of traffic and two-day delays on both sides of the Canal, and not just for carriers. Forget jumping on the Eurostar and having lunch at Brasserie Bellanger (pandemic permitting). According to a report by the Border and Protocol Delivery Group, passengers could also be forced to wait two more hours for Eurostar trains.
Naturally, Gove cares deeply about the impact on the people of Kent and says the system will be implemented through “… surveillance, ANPR cameras and other means, [and] we will do our best to ensure that … the constituents [in Kent] they have no drawbacks ”. But even the Road Transport Association is scratching its head over what those “other means” might be, let alone the police work required to enforce the law.
Rosie Duffield, MP from Canterbury, a constituency that also includes Whitstable where I live, is the only opposition MP in Kent’s 17 constituencies. Gove once informed him that he loves Whitstable oysters. “Well save them then!” Said Duffield, exasperated. As it stands, Whitstable’s most famous export could be doomed to rot in the back of retarded trucks.
Duffield is “apoplectic” about the proposed permits and the havoc they will cause, particularly for smaller independent businesses and the daily lives of residents – the impact of increased traffic on hospital trips is a particular concern. For the past three years, she says, Kent MPs’ concerns have been dismissed.
And then there is air pollution and asphalt. “Imagine walking your kids to school from one side of the trucks to the other,” she says. Hundreds of them will need places to park. A “Brexit truck park” is already planned in Ashford, with enough space for 2,000 trucks. “We’re supposed to be England’s garden, but we’re going to be England’s parking lot,” says Duffield.
There is some irony in the fact that 59% of people in Kent voted in favor of leaving in the 2016 referendum. As one Twitter user put it: “Kent voted strongly in favor of leaving the EU and is now basically a parking lot. French. Tremendous.”
I moved to Whitstable by the sea 13 years ago, after spending 16 years in the capital. If I missed some aspects of London, the art galleries, the ramen in Nanban, I could just hop on a train and go back, I reasoned. For a time I traveled to work, enjoying my sophisticated double life, except for everyday trips. All that trip to be able to go to Borough Market at lunchtime and pay ten pence for a falafel? No thanks. Now I work from home or technically from a small shared space at a local social business.
I love where I live, most of all, but there is a reason some locals call the area “Whitstabubble.” Kent is a British monoculture, and divisions abound between “born and bred” locals and newcomers; A large proportion of homes in Whitstable, for example, are second homes or vacation rentals that are pricing locals outside of their own town.
Hearing Gove’s plans for a border in Kent, my first thought was, doesn’t Kent already have one, rich and poor, to stay and go? Despite Margate’s reputation as “Shoreditch-on-Sea”, neighboring Thanet has one of the highest rates of child poverty in the South East of England. Down the street in Whitstable, you can’t get to the beach on a sunny day thanks to crowds of visitors getting their fix of expensive seafood. Hidden out of sight of our charming cafes, bijou art galleries, craft beer bar, and trendy bakery are areas of poverty and deprivation. Kent’s reported hate crime rate has quadrupled since 2013-14, and Whitstable, remember, was where Nigel Farage showed up to help local fishermen burn an effigy of Theresa May in protest of the Brexit negotiations in 2018.
Maybe it’s time for Kent to come together and embrace his new destination as an island within the continent. Thanet used to be isolated from the country. You can tell, it’s still weirdly creepy and flat. And then there is the Isle of Sheppy. A royal island, home to prisons, trailer parks, and a charming cabin, featured on this website (and subsequently booked until 2089). This, Kentish town, is our future. Build a wall. Implement a border. Separate Kent from the mainland, take it to sea. Everything is alright. We will be fine.
• Fay Schopen is a Kent-based journalist.
