Should the United Kingdom face a “doomsday” Brexit without a deal, it could run out of food in days.
Hospitals could also start running out of medications within a span of a few weeks.
Running Out of Everything
According to a new “doomsday scenario,” a no-deal Brexit could cause the United Kingdom to run out of food within a matter of days.
There is now less than a year before “Brexit Day.” The country will leave the European Union on March 29, 2019. Senior civil servants have come up with three potential scenarios for the way Brexit could turn out for the U.K. The first is the “mild” version of the separation. T he second is a “severe” scenario. Finally, the last one was dubbed “Armageddon.” These scenarios were created for Secretary of State for Exiting the E.U. David Davis.
Reports are already making headlines suggesting that Whitehall has started coming up with contingency plans in case the Port of Dover should experience a collapse within a single span of 24 hours.
Port of Dover Collapse
The Port of Dover is the closest port to France on the English Channel. It manages approximately 17 percent of the United Kingdom’s trade. Therefore, if the worst case Brexit scenario should occur in which there isn’t a deal, the port could collapse. That would result in a sudden and sharp shortage of essential supplies.
A source quoted by the Sunday Times stated that “In the second scenario, not even the worst, the port of Dover will collapse on day one. The supermarkets in Cornwall and Scotland will run out of food within a couple of days, and hospitals will run out of medicines within two weeks.”
In fact, the United Kingdom may need to rely on its Royal Air Force to help carry supplies from the cities into more remote portions of the country.
“You would have to medevac medicine into Britain, and at the end of week two we would be running out of petrol as well,” said the Sunday Times’ source.
Will Doomsday Happen?
A Department of Exiting the E.U. spokesperson has confirmed that while there has been discussion regarding various different possible Brexit scenarios, it is “completely false” to say that the “doomsday” version of Brexit will ever actually occur.
“A significant amount of work and decision making has gone into our no deal plans, especially where it relates to ports, and we know that none of this would come to pass,” explained the department’s spokesperson.