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The difference between healthy optimism and wishful thinking is razor thin. It can also be very bad for your health. As a nation we have been seduced into believing that there is no

difference. Which is partly why we find ourselves in a crisis largely of our making.  The Government is no longer in control. It twists and turns as it tries to deal with one problem after

another, lurching from denial to desperation.  Petrol forecourts are closing from Penzance (as I discovered yesterday) to John O’Groats. There is hardly any fuel in London. Motorists are

responding, perfectly rationally, by being safe rather than sorry and queuing to fill up wherever they can. The fuel shortage is not a mirage, however much the Transport Secretary, Grant

Shapps, may wish it were so. Boris Johnson is sending the army to the rescue. Supermarket shelves are threadbare. Inflation is rising. Energy prices are spiking alarmingly.  Cottage industry

energy suppliers, allowed to flourish in a market so untethered it resembles a cockfight, are collapsing like ninepins. Millions face the prospect of a bleak winter of energy poverty,

hammered home by an indefensible cut of £20 a week (£1000 a year) in Universal Credit.  The crisis — and let’s not beat about the bush, it is a crisis — is compounded by a chronic shortage

of labour — including up to 100,000 hauliers who went home after Brexit. (That is what we wanted, isn’t it?).  The notion that we might entice a few thousand back to rescue Christmas with

loadsamoney, having sent them packing, only to send them packing again on Christmas Eve when we’re done with them, is unworthy of them and certainly unworthy of us.  One Polish haulier told

the _Financial Times_ this week: Why would you want to go to Britain, jump through all these hoops, face all this hostile environment, if you could go to Ireland or Holland and earn more, be

respected, drive on nicer motorways with nice truck stops, and be a free European citizen, not a second-class citizen?” We will have to look further afield for truckers to countries —

Russia, Nigeria, the West Indies — where standards will inevitably be lower.  The pandemic has undoubtedly made things worse. But only in the sense that it turbo-charged an accident waiting

to happen. The shortage of lorry drivers was foreseeable and foreseen.  Before Brexit, we were part of a single market, as Germany’s new Chancellor-in-waiting has just pointedly reminded us.

The fundamental purpose of such a trading area is to move supplies seamlessly to where they are most needed, like a gigantic self-correcting waterway system that shifts water automatically

from areas of plenty to drought-stricken ones.  Britain, of all European countries, operates on a delicately balanced just-in-time supply system. Food, fuel, raw materials, spare parts,

hauliers move in and out as close as possible to the time, often the hour, when they are needed.  Without the single market, that becomes very, very hard. Self-sufficiency is not a state of

mind unless you are North Korea or a monastic community. To be self-sufficient or as self-sufficient as you can be in a joined-up world, you need neighbours who are proximate and

cooperative. Just-in-time trading epitomises a you-scratch-my-back world.  By leaving the single market we have elected to move our supply chain thousands of miles away east and west,

wishfully thinking that trade deals with Australia and America (but not yet) will plug the gap.  Granted, Britain is not alone in facing a whopping spike in gas prices. The energy crunch is

the result of a perfect storm: the easing of pandemic restrictions have pushed demand for gas to new highs; a cold winter has depleted stocks; an exceptionally hot summer fuelled demand for

electricity to drive air conditioning. But Britain is more alone in dealing with these problems, now that it has left the single market. And you have to ask: is mainland Europe panic-buying

fuel? Are supermarket shelves in Paris or Berlin bare?  Last December the EU26, in a landmark agreement, set up a mammoth bond-backed €750 billion Covid-recovery fund. Its progress is

clunky. Clunky is the EU’s middle name. It took the club a while to get the vaccine roll-out right, but it is now equal to anywhere in the world.  Nimble is good. But in a world of

cut-throat competition, increasingly defined by the rivalry between giants like China, Russia and the USA, size matters.  None of this was inevitable. But instead of kicking the tyres of a

hard Brexit, we indulged in wishful thinking. Leave the single market if you must. But ask yourself first: “What happens if the hauliers go home? What happens if doctors and nurses go home?

What if the fruit-pickers don’t come back? What will be the knock-on effects of ending free movement of labour?”  There was no risk assessment and therefore no contingency plan. Temporary

migration schemes are a common feature of a transactional world. But no thought was given to such a fallback. More wishful thinking.  Meanwhile the Prime Minister talks vaguely of “levelling

up” while rushing to put out one fire after another. He tells the world to “grow up” at the United Nations ahead of COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. But he has no plan.  The spike in gas

prices is temporary. But the shortage of hauliers is not. Neither is the scarcity of alternative markets. Joe Biden has made it clear that a trade deal with the US is not at the top of his

in-tray. Johnson is finding that words have consequences. Threatening to torpedo the Northern Ireland protocol and hoping this will go unnoticed by an Irish-American president is the height

of wishful thinking.  The pandemic has undoubtedly made things harder. And it is unfortunate, to say the least, that it coincided with Brexit. But Covid is not a cover for the consequences

of Brexit. If anything, once-in-a-lifetime events like the coronavirus argue for more thought, less speed and as little wishful thinking as possible.  But this is what happens when the

boring, plodding centre folds, or is pushed out of a top floor window; when we start to despise expertise, acumen and careful analysis. When everything we do is measured against a single,

dogmatic idea, good sense and good judgement goes with it.  Johnson is finally experiencing the harsh realities of power. He relishes power. He wields it to great effect within his own

party. This gives him the illusion of control. But he is discovering, as many have before him, that it takes more than a big personality and a big majority to govern, let alone be the master

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