Hotel Inspector Alex Polizzi’s EU workers disaster shows that the Brexit chickens are coming home to roost
It has been a gloomy week on the sunlit uplands of sovereign Britain, and for all the talk of football, one thing we can be certain of coming home are Brexit chickens to roost.
As the consequences of their actions begin to dawn on Leave-supporting papers – “Britain’s vegetables are rotting in the fields; soon imports will fill the shelves instead,” reported the Sunday Times, while the Telegraph told readers “Food isn’t reaching shops as lack of drivers hits supply chain” – the same is true of the few celebrities who backed quitting the EU.
“I’m like the turkey who voted for Christmas,” admitted Alex Polizzi, TV’s Hotel Inspector, who has been unable to find staff for her own hotel in East Sussex and is consequently having to work round the clock taking food orders, serving drinks and doing the housekeeping.
“Brexit has caused us enormous problems with recruitment,” she told the i newspaper. “We had forgotten how much we relied on these enthusiastic young professionals from hospitality schools across Europe.”
It’s a far cry from the halcyon pre-referendum times when all Alex had to serve up were glib one-liners like, “The European Union reminds me of an overpriced, badly run hotel.” A room at her new place costs from £190 per night.
From an ironing maiden to Iron Maiden, with the heavy metal band’s vocalist Bruce Dickinson appearing on Sky News to bemoan the costly visas and permits now required if British bands want to tour in the EU. Dickinson, who in 2016 had declared, “Brexit actually opens our borders… (it) will not change the status of the UK by very much”, now regrets the decision to bring his sector to the slaughter, said: “Don’t get me started on the Government’s attitude to the entertainment industry.
“It’s very well known that I voted for Brexit. But you know the idea is after you’ve done it you then go in and be sensible about the relationship you have with people. So at the moment all this guff about not being able to play in Europe, and the Europeans not being able to play over here and work permits and all the rest of the rubbish – come on! You know, get your act together.”
The unkind might suggest Dickinson follows the advice of Maiden’s 2010 track Mother Of Mercy: “I sit waiting for my darkest hour to come, I cannot think about the things that I have done, It shouldn’t take a fool to see that I believe: Accept the consequence, repent for what I’ve done”.
The rest of us may just have to run to the hills…
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