It has been a gloomy year on the sunlit uplands of sovereign Britain, and this column has reported dutifully on the carnage and chaos caused by fall-out from the B-word.
So let’s sum 2021 up in verse…
We’re almost 12 months since the end of transition
And Brexit still looks like a suicide mission.
A shortage of this thing; more red tape for that ’un
It’s no laughing matter, unless your name’s Stratton.
No sign of fruit pickers, no drivers for lorries
Less bar staff for liquors; but more Nadine Dorries.
An absence of nurses to give the sick sutures
A dearth of meat workers, so we can’t have a butcher’s.
Our jabs may have made us less sickened and peaky,
Yet without Nando’s chicken, our food was less cheeky.
So what’s been the cause of this terrible mess?
You won’t find the answer in the Daily Express.
But when we voted Leave, a lot of folks left.
Which explains why some businesses feel so bereft.
More gaps on the shelves at the big supermarket
Less workers who sound like A-ha’s Morten Harket.
They sodded off home to the good old EU
Leaving us with the jobs that we don’t want to do.
And instead of solutions, the PM tells stories
(Who’d have thought his worst party would not be the Tories?)
He’s shafted the farmers and the fishers in boats
They’re no longer needed now he’s had their votes.
If there’s good in the Protocol, he simply can’t find it
He must have been drinking pure alcohol when he signed it.
And though polls might be moving in the right direction
There’s nearly three years to the general election.
So though it’s not festive to end sounding doomy
The forecast for the uplands is not sunlit but gloomy.
