British Army Distributes Fuel to Gas Stations in UK

The British military personnel in combat uniforms arrived at a  British Petroleum (BP) warehouse, on Monday,after the government ordered them to help deliver fuel to make up for a severe shortage of truck drivers.

Britain's various supply chains, from gasoline to poultry, medicine, and milk, have been stretched to breaking point by labor shortages in the wake of the Brexit and COVID-19 crises.

Panic buying of fuel and a shortage of truck drivers led to chaotic scenes across major cities in the United Kingdom (UK) last week, with long lines of drivers stopping to fill their tanks.

Some had fistfights to get some liters of fuel at petrol pumps, while others stored fuel in old water bottles.

Meanwhile, UK Finance Minister Rishi Sunak told BBC radio that as an extra precaution, the government has sent  additional drivers to work.

He added that he thinks the situation has now been improving daily for more than a week because demand falling back to more normal levels and it is very much expected that things will resolve themselves.

But Reuters reporters said that they saw at least 10 gas stations still closed across London, the capital city of the UK.

Gordon Palmer,  Executive Director of the Union of Retailers of Fuel in the UK, said that about 22 percent of gas stations in London and the southeast of the country are still without fuel.

He added that the return to stocks of normal levels before the last crisis may take between a week to ten days.

On their part, British ministers have repeatedly denied any link between the fuel crisis and Brexit.

They described the severe shortage of truck drivers as a global problem in recent week weeks, even though gas stations in neighboring European countries have not seen queues of drivers waiting to fill their tanks.

It is worth noting that the British government announced the deployment of the army as of  Saturday, to help solve the fuel crisis in the country, according to the Al-Arabiya channel, in urgent news a while ago.

Nearly ten months after Britain's exit from the European Union (Brexit), the United Kingdom (UK) is facing a severe fuel crisis, due to a lack of drivers and foreign workers transporting fuel supplies, as well as food from place to place, threatening the "Christmas" celebrations.

The American news network, "CNN", highlighted the worsening fuel crisis in the UK, and said that high energy bills, high prices, and an acute shortage of workers are factors that impede the supply of food and fuel and threaten to impede Britain's recovery from the Corona pandemic.

The crises afflicting the UK economy have sparked talk in newspapers and among politicians of the looming “Winter of Discontent,” referring to the strike waves in 1978-1979 that brought the British economy to its knees.

There is even talk of stagflation, which is a terrifying combination of stagnant growth and high inflation, the network said.

“CNN” explained that Britain’s withdrawal from the EU led to introduce harsh policies of immigration and pushed Britain out of the European markets of energy and commodities.

It becomes more difficult for British companies to recruit European employees, as trading with Europe costs more despite Europe being the major trade partner with the UK.

The US network considered that the shortage of labor in Britain is not an enviable result of the Brexit but it is an outcome of policies and ideologies of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to walk out of the EU amid difficult negotiations with the European Commission.

Many treaties in vital fields including energy between Britain and the EU were frozen that followed by introducing harsher immigration policies to reduce the number of non-trained workers to the UK.

Meanwhile, the British government said that it seeks to terminate dependence on that sort of labor.