A POPULAR American writer has dared to lift the lid on what he says are the catastrophic consequences of Brexit, which have turned Britain into an “Orwellian society”, where nobody can talk about the subject.

Umair Haque said he had heard about fuel and food shortages on the news and hadn’t quite believed it, but asked a friend in London if it was really as bad as it had been portrayed.

She told him: “It is that bad. I couldn’t get gas or milk today.”

Writing on the Medium.com website, Haque asked: “What kind of country is that? A failing state.”

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And he said the shortages were not restricted to basics: “It’s food. Electronics. Energy. Britain’s economy is dying, having a series of heart attacks, going into multiple organ failure.

“The shortages spreading across Britain have a single cause. Only nobody can or will say it. Nobody much in a position of leadership or power, that is. Brexit.

“Brexit has made Britain a vastly poorer society. Brits can’t afford to live the way they once used to.

“The necessities they once took for granted are becoming luxuries. This is what it means to become a much poorer society — shortages, followed by rising prices, followed by falling incomes, ending in a long depression. Britain has impoverished itself.”

Haque said Brits were being told that the wreckage of their society and future was about a “supply chain crisis”, which he said was “flatly untrue”.

“The cause of the shortages spreading like wildfire across Britain is that Britain chose to break up, unilaterally, suddenly, with its largest trading partner. Where then was it going to source basics from – most of which it imports?

“Anyone sane could have foreseen all this, and many did. Britain imports everything from gas to oil to energy to food. The vast majority of all that comes from Europe.

“What was leaving the EU going to do? Boris Johnson chose – chose – to leave the EU on hard terms, not even being part of its customs arrangements, its single market.

“He could have chosen otherwise. The consequence was tariffs, paperwork, red tape, bureaucracy.”

He said the ultimate result was Britain could not obtain what it once took for granted, and warned that things would get worse: “Today, it’s milk and gas and energy. Tomorrow, it’s medicine and healthcare and clean water – yes, even the agents used to purify Britain’s water come from … Europe.

“Societies – economies – tend to have certain reserves of goods. Warehouses, shipping containers, and so on. Maybe about six months to a year’s worth.

“It’s no surprise that right on cue, about nine months or so later, Britain’s beginning to experience severe shortages. Again, they will not go away. They will get worse, because Britain has to import the vast majority of its basics, and it used to from Europe, but now it can’t. At least not fast enough, efficiently enough, or, in many cases, at all.”

Haque said many European businesses had simply stopped supplying Britain because they can’t make a profit because of tariffs and red tape.

Coupled with that was a severe labour shortage, including amongst lorry drivers, who were also once European imports.

“But now many have left, suddenly, because they had no right to live and work in Britain. Delivery drivers from Europe won’t make the trip to Britain now, either, because, well, they end trapped in their trucks for a week, at backed up border control checkpoints. Not worth it.”

Fruit rotting in the fields with no-one to pick it, businesses unable to find enough workers, a healthcare system that’s “crashing and burning as doctors and nurses pack up and leave a xenophobic, hostile country”.

Haque quoted Germany’s incoming PM Olaf Schultz, who said: “We worked very hard to convince the British not to leave the union. Now they decided different and I hope they will manage the problems coming from that."

He also quoted the Dutch Federation of Trade Unions as saying: “The EU workers we speak to will not go to the UK for a short-term visa to help the UK out of the sh*t they created themselves. Drivers need way more than a visa and a payslip.”

He said all Europe knows that the cause of Britain’s woes is Brexit, a view that is “forbidden” in Britain. Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer refuses to come anywhere near saying Brexit is destroying Britain, and says he still backs it.

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“The BBC has article after article questioning whether the ‘supply chain crisis’ has anything to do with Brexit, and a businesswoman even says that her interview on the shortages was edited to remove any mention of Brexit … the Conservatives who created this mess, of course, dare not mention the word at all.” writes Haque.

All of this made Britain an Orwellian society: “He was the one who said, ‘In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act’.

“That is exactly where Britain is today. Nobody much can see what is right under one’s nose. Universal deceit is the rule by which society operates. Manufactured doubt has created an atmosphere of fear. Nobody can say the word which needs to be said, and so nothing can be done about it, ensuring the plunge into further ruin.

“Orwell would have laughed sadly at today’s Britain. From his little house in Kentish Town, he would have said, perhaps, something like this. Criticising Brexit has become a thoughtcrime. Doublespeak now reigns – it’s a ‘supply chain crisis’, not the colossal stupidity of Brexit … How tragic to see Britain become the kind of society Orwell warned about.

“There’s a lesson in there, somewhere, about the persistence of folly, and the endurance of ignorance. Nobody can say the words: Brexit is the lie that seduced and ruined us.

“Orwell warned us, too, what happens to such societies. They die.”