As someone who was born and bred in Dover, the threat of a no-deal Brexit has always felt particularly urgent. My hometown would be one of the first to feel the impact, a guinea pig for potential chaos. People in Dover won’t be watching the news to see what happens on 1 November, they will be seeing it with their own eyes. As the risk of leaving the EU without a deal has become increasingly more likely, the concern for my hometown has increased.
This is why Sunday night’s Sky News report felt so alarming. An analysis – commissioned by the Department for Transport itself – suggests that in the event of no deal, lorries and freight vehicles could be delayed for up to two days at Dover, with the best-case scenario being two to three hours. At the moment it is two to three minutes.
This would in effect turn Dover into a car park. The small amount of funding promised by the government will do little to fix the disruption to people’s lives. People would struggle to get to work, to the town centre, to go about their lives in a normal way. Local businesses would suffer. Residents would have to plan every journey with the potential for it to take 10 times longer than usual.
As always, the people bearing the brunt of the disruption would be the worst off. They are the kids I went to the local comprehensive with, the family who raised me on the council estates of Dover. Those in lower-paid, insecure work are more at risk of losing their job if the potential pile-up of 8,000 vehicles causes them to be late.
The white cliffs of Dover have long been considered a bastion of Britishness. But Dover has suffered under years of austerity and a lack of investment that has left people even more exposed should the worst happen. Not only will we see the chaos build up in front of us, potentially for months, but the worst off will feel it in their wallets too. It’s true that 62% of people in Dover voted for Brexit, but I do not believe for one second that any of them voted for this, that any of those people wanted to see their hometown and livelihoods plunged into mayhem – they wanted to see their lives improved, as many there so urgently need them to be.
The leave campaign worked so well in places like Dover because it played to the desire for change. Now the only changes people from my hometown will see are ones that will make their lives worse, not better.
People in Dover deserve certainty, clarity, reassurance and representation. They are getting none of that at the moment. Boris Johnson and the Brexit elite are doing their utmost to shut down debate. Now Dover’s future rests on the shoulders of the MPs who will try on Tuesday to prevent no deal. I hope, for the sake of my hometown and everyone there, that they succeed.
• Richard Brooks is co-founder of the campaign group For our Future’s Sake
