Matthew Lynn

The port of Dover has been closed down. The Eurotunnel isn’t carrying any freight for a couple of days. The lorries are already starting to back up in Kent, the supermarkets are working out where they can get fresh supplies from, and flights have been suspended, with the British likely to find they are turned away from most of our neighbouring countries. If you had blanked out all the other news you might think that after some terminal row about herring, Brexit had actually been brought forward by ten days, creating the kind of chaos that even the most swivel-eyed Remainer could scarcely have imagined possible. And yet, of course, it is the new strain of Covid-19 that means restrictions are being put in place. But, hey, one thing seems to have come good.

Factories will close. Prices will rise. Profits will suffer. Another day, another warning of disaster from one of the major car manufacturers about the catastrophic cost of a no-deal Brexit. But hold on. Before anyone’s eyes start to glaze over, there is a twist to this one. It is a German company that is starting to worry about the hit to its bottom line. And, in truth, it is hardly likely to be the last. Yesterday, BMW, which used to be the most formidable manufacturer of upmarket automobiles until Tesla came along, went public for the first time about the financial impact of Britain leaving the EU without a deal.

Currency speculators at some of the hedge funds in Mayfair may be feeling quietly pleased. Trade experts will be relieved that their lucrative consultancy gigs will keep on coming. Heck, even financial columnists can safely pontificate about the possible outcome for a while yet, while the FBPE mob on Twitter can carry on predicting the apocalypse every time Nissan adjusts its production schedules. There are a few people for whom today’s agreement between Boris Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to carry on discussing a trade deal will come as a relief. For the wider economy, however, it is little short of a disaster. It is hard to know exactly what there is still to discuss between Britain and the EU.

Lorries will be backed up across Kent. The shops will run short of essential goods. Travel plans will be disrupted, and factories will start to close as British goods are shut out of their main export markets. As the UK comes to the end of its transitional deal with the EU, and as talks on a trade agreement appear to have reached an impasse, there will be plenty of high-stakes brinkmanship, and pressure on the government to give some ground on fishing and regulation to avoid the potential chaos of no deal. And yet in truth, if Boris Johnson caves into the EU’s demands at the last moment, the voters will punish him — and they will be right to do so. Right now, it is anyone’s guess whether a trade deal can be done at the last moment between the EU and the UK.

They’ve only received a fraction of their old salaries. Many have missed out on months of work. And their pension contributions and holidays have been completely scrapped. So it is perhaps understandable that teachers, town planners and tax officials are feeling a little aggrieved. Except, er, no, sorry I made a mistake there. That was a description of what happened to the self-employed over the last eight months, not the average public sector worker. Instead, it now looks likely that the government will impose a pay freeze on everyone who works for the government this year, and possibly next as well. The 5.5 million affected will reportedly include the police, armed forces, teachers and civil servants.

A new era of transatlantic cooperation will have begun. The United States will pivot towards Brussels. The trade wars will come to a swift end, and the American president will once again be a respected figure on this side of the Atlantic.  With Donald Trump finally defeated, if not quite yet evicted from the White House, most commentators are expecting a far closer relationship between Berlin, Paris, Brussels and Washington, with Boris’s Brexit Britain left out in the cold. But hold on. Something is not quite right with that narrative. Instead, the EU seems intent on going to war with Joe Biden. In the very same week that the veteran politician finally made it to the presidency, the European Union has, oddly, made two extraordinarily aggressive moves against the US.

There are still safety trials to be completed. Data has to be collected, checked, double-checked, and then peer-reviewed. And we still need to find out whether it is the most effective of the various candidates currently in development or whether there is something even better just around the corner. But the Pfizer vaccine has already proved something beyond any reasonable doubt. Free enterprise works. And for all its flaws, it remains the best system for solving complex problems. Amid all the justifiable excitement over the potential approval of the first safe and effective vaccine against Covid-19 it would be easy to overlook one point: the vaccine was developed with private money.

High Street chains are closing all the time. The restaurant chains are shutting their doors. The gyms are going out of business and it doesn't look as if all the airlines will survive. There have been lots of different industries that have been wiped out this year. But now we can add one more to the list: the polling companies. It remains to be seen who won the US Presidential election. Donald Trump and Joe Biden may fight it out for a few more days yet. But it is absolutely clear who lost. The people who are paid plenty of money to talk to voters and work out what they are thinking. It was meant to be a 'Blue Wave', meaning the Democrats would take both the White House and Congress, probably in a landslide.

Infections are rising. Hospitals will be overwhelmed. And very soon the vulnerable will start to die. From today, the Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford is closing down Wales with one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe, shuttering all but essential shops. For the next 17 days, hotels, pubs, restaurants and for a while, schools, will be closed as well. That is meant to fight Covid-19. And yet now the small print is emerging it is increasingly looking like something else is going on in Wales: a war against the economy and the free market. It would be easy to imagine that the Welsh lockdown is very similar to the national one in April and May. In most ways it is.

More help for bars and restaurants. Grants for businesses that are forced to close. Additional funding for the self-employed. The Chancellor Rishi Sunak has started shaking the magic money tree again, promising extra assistance to keep the economy alive during a second wave of Covid-19. There is a problem, however, and as the Chancellor runs through rescue package after rescue package it is becoming increasingly apparent. While Sunak is very good at coming up with wheezes to get through the next few weeks there isn’t yet much sign of a plan for a post-Covid economy – and that is increasingly what is needed. The problem is not the measures themselves.

More jobs will be lost in the long run. Businesses will go under. And government debt will soar even higher. Labour’s Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds is pushing the argument that a circuit breaker — that is a short, sharp national lockdown — will be cheaper in the long run. It will keep the virus under control, and therefore enable the economy to bounce back quicker. Channelling her inner Gordon Brown, she has even come up with a very precise figure for that. Apparently, not having a circuit breaker will cost us £110 billion. But hold on. Even leaving aside the point that precise estimates should always make us suspicious — is it really £110 billion, rather £107 billion, or £113 billion? — that is crazy.