A border with Kent: is this what sovereignty feels like?

On Wednesday, Michael Gove offered the British people another reminder of what they had voted for. On top of the shock to our economy, loss of our trading markets and breaches of international law, we have found a new way to take back control: installing a new border for lorries in Kent.

In the Commons, Gove confirmed that hauliers will require a “Kent access permit” to ensure they have the correct paperwork before they reach the Channel ports, thereby preventing long traffic jams. This announcement follows the furore over the frontier currently being implemented in the Irish Sea. And so in the latest crime against irony, a government which wanted full control of borders in the pursuit of freedom has ended up erecting two new ones inside its own country.

Gove’s letter to industry on the “reasonable worst-case scenario” revealed that up to 70 per cent of EU-bound lorries may not be ready for the post-transition controls, up to 7,000 could have to queue in Kent for two days, and the disruption could in fact get worse as January progresses.

Of course, in practical terms the Kent permit is a viable solution. As trade experts have pointed out, it reduces the certainty of gridlock at the ports themselves. It will not eliminate delays elsewhere: lorries will be held back with paperwork at depots and factories instead. And as with everything else Brexit, it will dramatically increase costs and red tape for businesses already hammered by Covid-19. No matter. Sovereignty is the goal and sovereignty must win out.

Now, then, is the time for firms to get ready. Which leaves just one small problem: they can’t.

Naturally, businesses need to know what tariffs are coming so they can prepare. This was the exact purpose of the 21-month implementation period, which was slashed to 11 months, and runs out in just over three. This was the period designed to enact the trade deal. But as we know, that deal hasn’t been signed, and both sides are open to the possibility it never will be. All businesses know is that there will be some kind of trouble in all circumstances. Needless to say, it is difficult to implement new arrangements in under 100 days, and harder still when they don’t yet exist.

And so, as night follows day, the government seeks to blame Brussels. This week Environment Secretary George Eustice declared that disruption could in fact emerge from a “failure of the EU to plan.” That was of course nonsense. Never mind that everything stems from the UK’s political decisions to leave the single market and customs union, not to tell people what that entailed, and then refuse any opportunity to extend the negotiating period. France was building new border posts and the Netherlands was recruiting new customs officers while the UK was still insisting nothing would change. The government has only one thing it can blame the EU for, and that is treating Britain in precisely the way it demanded: as a third country. The real complaint is that Brussels took us at our word.

It is, in any case, pointless to try and blame the EU, either practically or politically. It’s not just that the government alone is now answerable to the British people. We were told the EU could never hurt us, that its interests didn’t count, and that its trade barriers were irrelevant. Those lies are now being ruthlessly exposed.

Perhaps it is the cynicism which wounds the most. All the promises of “exact same benefits,” “the easiest deal in human history” and Britain “holding all the cards” have been swept away without a single acknowledgement those words were ever uttered. Under the new approved narrative, we knew we were voting for economic chaos and a broken global reputation. That was the price of freedom, and if you think you were told otherwise, you must be mistaken.

The Kent border issue has been treated as a joke, but the truth behind it is only too serious. This is about having something you wanted, replacing it with something you hate, and insisting that’s democracy. We already had control of our borders. The fact we didn’t notice it was the sign we were using it effectively. Now we are being forced to spend millions of pounds demonstrating that control just to ensure our trade infrastructure does not collapse. Our attempt to exhibit what we had thus parades the extent of its loss.

When it comes down to it, Brexit was always about borders: the border in our own minds, which declared Britain different, special and separate. Yes, we are an island—but we are every bit a part of the continent as well. Socially, politically and economically, we need Europe because we are inextricably connected to it. The frontiers in Kent and the Irish Sea will be built and, perhaps when common sense prevails, eventually unbuilt. But until we remove this final border, we will never be free.