British PM Johnson expects fuel, gas & food crunch to linger until Christmas

The shortage of heavy-goods vehicles (HGV) that has recently hit Britain, with petrol stations running out of fuel and shops running out of food, may last until Christmas, according to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

The announcement echoed claims made by Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who refused to rule out shelf shortages lingering until December 25.

“Rishi is right invariably in everything that he says, but what you’re seeing is a… it depends how you interpret what he’s saying,” Johnson said in an interview with BBC, adding that the problems were mostly attributed to the stresses and strains of growth in the UK economy.

The British PM also said that the government had no plans for returning to “uncontrolled immigration” to solve the current problems. Johnson suggested for the first time that the crunch was related to Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union.

“The way forward for our country is not to just pull the big lever marked ‘uncontrolled immigration,’ and allow in huge numbers of people to do work... So what I won’t do is go back to the old failed model of low wages, low skills supported by uncontrolled immigration,” he told the media.

The fuel supply crisis raging in the UK over the past month has been blamed on the nation’s shortage of HGV drivers, which is reportedly connected to the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, the labour force available from the EU is reportedly considered “unskilled” and cut off from the HGV driver market.

The lack of drivers is not the only problem concerning the labour sector. Severe shortage of abattoir workers may also lead to the slaughter and disposal of more than 100,000 pigs as early as this week, prompting fears of a pork deficit.

Last week, London offered 5,000 short-term visas for EU-based lorry drivers to work for UK firms, and 5,500 for poultry workers. The country’s authorities have also called in the army to deploy military personnel to deliver gasoline to service stations.

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