March 2019 – Scaffolding
Do you sometimes get the feeling that Brexit is just a bad dream?
It feels like that nightmare in which you’re trying to run from a mortal threat but your legs won’t move fast enough. The past two years of Brexit negotiations have sucked all the energy out of British politics, wasting government muscle and snapping the occasional ministerial sinew in a desperate struggle to escape disaster.
But, with only three weeks to go, we’ve hardly moved – and now the ogre of Brexit is breathing down our necks.
Personally, I can’t quite believe we’ve arrived at this situation. In fact, I’m beginning to suspect that we’ll wake up in April and discover that it was, after all, just a bad dream.
And I think there’s good reason to cling to this belief. Beneath all the fear-mongering about the Irish backstop and ‘crashing out’ with no deal, there’s a remarkable degree of sang-froid in the construction industry. Laing O’Rourke has done its sums and reported (page 7) that it foresees no negative impact on the industry from Brexit, deal or no deal.
And on page 27 we speak to the Polish boss of a London-based steelwork firm that employs a 60% Polish workforce. He, just like David Cameron himself, is “intensely relaxed” about Brexit.
There are still three weeks to go before the Brexit deadline and anything could happen before then. But I, for one, will not be losing any sleep over it.
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