The government has known about the Felixstowe problem for a year, what a shambles

The Department for Transport has apparently been ‘monitoring’ the situation since last November, says Chris Blackhurst

Containers piled high in Felixstowe on Wednesday (Reuters)

For a while now I’ve tried not to believe the worst of this government. I’ve seen signs but dismissed them; I’ve heard and read Dominic Cummings’s diatribes, but I’m also wary of his desire for revenge.

There was the mishandling of the pandemic in the early stages but other countries also fared badly, and we got the vaccine rollout up and running. Afghanistan was a disaster but again, we were not alone. There have been other instances of cackhandedness. Surely though, Boris and his colleagues can’t be that bad?

They can, and they are. Proof comes with the “news” this week that Felixstowe is chocker and cannot take any more containers. It was the lead story in The Times: “Ministers are being warned that Britain faces gaps on the shelves at Christmas as shipping containers carrying toys and electrical goods were diverted from the country’s biggest port yesterday because it is full. Shipping companies are directing vessels away from Felixstowe after it ran out of storage capacity. The port, on the Suffolk coast, normally handles about 36 per cent of Britain’s container imports and exports, much of it toys and furniture.”