Revenge for the EU not conceding to Brexit demands? A chronicle of Covid-chaos is let off the lead as thousands of fleeing passengers at London’s Heathrow Airport scrambled onto the last flight to Dublin, Ireland. France, Germany, Israel, El Salvador, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Italy, Finland, Denmark, Turkey, Morocco, Canada, Belgium, Austria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Ireland have banned all flights from Britain.

Britons are unlikely to get Covid but could certainly starve to death. Britain imports most of the nation’s produce. Isolated, the shop shelves will rapidly empty as panic buying follows news that products will no longer arrive from abroad.

Boris Johnson will chair a meeting of the Government’s Cobra civil contingencies committee on Monday after a series of countries announced they were stopping flights from the UK, Downing Street has said. Eurotunnel Le Shuttle has said that the UK-France border will close at 11 pm tonight and last train at 9.24 pm. Southern England was plunged into a Tier 4 lockdown in a bid to suppress a ‘mutant’ strain of coronavirus. US authorities are looking ‘very carefully’ into the Covid-19 variant while indicating that a ban on UK travel was not currently on the cards

London’s Heathrow Airport was pictured descending into chaos last night as tens of thousands of passengers scrambled onto the last flight to Dublin minutes before a Covid-19 travel ban set in at midnight to nations across Europe including Ireland.  

Passenger Rachael Scully, 23, tweeted that the Irish Government eventually gave the ‘green light’ for the flight which was set to leave at 10:30 pm. She wrote: ‘Irish gov has given the green light and we’ve been processed for a BA flight. Whoops of joy once the news got out. It’s a Christmas miracle!’ 

However, some Irish people tweeted the stranded Heathrow passengers to urge them to stay put following the discovery of the ’70 per cent more infectious’ mutant coronavirus strain which plunged London and the south-east into Tier Four.  However, the lethality of the supposedly new strain is no greater than that of a severe cold, less than that of influenza.

It comes amid growing fears Britain’s supermarket shelves usually stuffed with imported produce may be emptied after France included British trucks in its ban on travel. The Port of Dover closed to all freight vehicles leaving the UK last night for the next 48 hours. Hauliers coming to Britain from France will still be allowed in but there are fears that lorry drivers will not travel to avoid being ‘marooned’ in the UK.

The Food and Drink Federation CEO Ian Wright said: ‘Tonight’s suspension of accompanied freight traffic from the UK to France has the potential to cause serious disruption to UK Christmas fresh food supplies and exports of UK food and drink. ‘Continental truckers will not want to travel here if they have a real fear of getting marooned.

One road haulage boss told the BBC that while lorries are still allowed from France to the UK, he feared that many European drivers would be unwilling to make the trip fearing they could not get home for Christmas, meaning British supermarket shelves could empty.

The Eurotunnel Le Shuttle has said that the UK-France border will close at 11pm tonight and the last shuttle between the UK and France is at 9.24pm with access to the UK prohibited from 10pm.

It comes as the Eurostar has also cancelled its trains between London, Brussels in Belgium and Amsterdam in the Netherlands, starting from Monday.   

France’s Prime Minister Jean Castex tweeted: ‘All flows of people from the United Kingdom to France are suspended from midnight tonight, for 48 hours, and for all means of transport.’ Source