NO toilets.

No water.

No blankets.

No answers for drivers in the Manston lorry park.

No warmth for families with children stuck in cars throughout Dover.

For three days.

Without explanation, apology or the prospect of more than a temporary move from one queue at Manston to another at the port.

Without enough trust in the Government’s “system” to risk move and losing their place.

Without help from locals reluctant to let stranded strangers into their homes because of Covid.

Helped only by KhalsaAid – a Sikh organisation with members in Coventry and Maidenhead who travelled for hours to distribute their homemade hot food.

And still, for most people, no real hope of getting out of the queues and onto a ferry before Christmas.

The situation at Dover is a disgrace, happening at the very place and the very time Britain’s emergency planning should be at its strongest – in the run-up to a possible No-Deal Brexit.

The message isn’t being missed by anyone – the British Government isn’t prepared for anything.

And yet – of course – Brexit-supporting papers have been trying to shift blame for the Dover shambles onto the auld enemy, France. A Sun headline this week read: “‘Macron is a c***!’ Boris Johnson and ministers explode in anger.”

Seriously?

What self-respecting political leader could ignore the spiralling problems developing a Channel Tunnel away in Kent?

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Maybe a premier asleep at the wheel, unwilling to restrict visitors even at the height of the pandemic, more interested in protecting the right to go down the pub and too busy calculating the contracts-for-pals potential of the latest disaster to act swiftly. Or at all.

So, let’s phrase it differently.

What competent premier could ignore a spiralling problem like the situation in Kent?

None.

Can you imagine how quickly Britain’s pro-Brexit press would have conjured up the “danger at our doors” if such a situation had developed on the other side of the Channel?

In fact, the French president has done us all a favour by giving the flailing and complacent UK Government a public and much-needed kick up the jacksy and insisting on a system of testing to save lives and limit spread of the new virulent strain – and the newer South African mutation revealed by Matt Hancock yesterday.

Let’s be clear. Boris Johnson could have avoided all the chaos and apparent embarrassment if he had announced lorry driver tests himself, the day he hit the international alarm bells by bumping Kent into the highest Covid tier and essentially cancelling Christmas. But that would have required a prime minister who thinks about the wider consequences of his actions and has a “world-beating test and trace system” at his disposal.

Sadly, that ain’t Boris.

Hence the need to throw mud at the French since, south of the Border at least, it tends to stick.

And after producing vast waves of its customary synthetic anger, the Tory press realised an even greater opportunity beckoned. The chance to blame the “Dover shambles” Macron for something even larger, longer lasting and infinitely more awkward – the likely, imminent announcement by Boris Johnson of a shabby Brexit deal allowing French fishermen continuing access to British coastal waters.

“UK erupts as Macron’s game playing could sink Brexit deal,” announced one English tabloid last night, as the Brexit talks reached a climax and editors spotted the opportunity to kill two birds with a single rocher.

The red-top continued: “Boris Johnson is furious at Emmanuel Macron for barring British lorries from crossing into France, and his anger has the potential to sink a post-Brexit trade deal completely.”

Wait a minute – whose anger?

Yip, English tabloids are actually blaming President Macron for Boris’s inability to keep the heid.

Classic.

Boris has ta’en a maddy because Covid is “out of control” and a neighbouring state has moved quickly and decisively to protect itself. As a result, Boris is now too angry to negotiate properly at this eleventh hour.

Do newspaper bosses really think folk will buy that utterly feeble line.

So, if no deal or a weak Brexit deal has been agreed (and at the time of writing it hadn’t), who will be held responsible? Macron or Johnson?

Did “un grand garçon” really do it and run away?

Even in Brexit-supporting England, the latest YouGov poll suggests most folk aren’t buying that.

Boris is the number one target for blame with 65% of folk saying the Tory leader would bear a lot or some of the responsibility for Britain leaving without a deal, while 60% think the EU would be mostly or partly responsible and 57% blame MPs who voted against Theresa May’s Brexit deal in a bid to quit the EU with No-Deal.

Whatever he has managed to negotiate, Boris is going to look bad.

He broke it with the lies of Brexit – now he’s going to own it. And no amount of rewriting history or blaming the French will help him.

WHAT does that mean for Scotland?

Cue Willie Rennie.

The LibDem leader should be congratulated for provoking an articulate and passionate defence of independence from Nicola Sturgeon at (probably) the final First Minister’s Questions of the year yesterday, after suggesting indyref2 would be the Brexit2 to Boris Johnson’s Brexit1.

Having lit the touchpaper, Mr Rennie should have stood well back.

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An incandescent SNP leader snapped back that the only reason we are having a bad deal Brexit thrust upon us is because we aren’t an independent country.

“Independence would see us working together with countries in Europe and building our own future instead of having it foisted upon us by Boris and his band of Brexiteers.

“I’m not planning to hold indyref2 right now. I put it on hold when the pandemic struck – if only Boris had done the same with Brexit. But as Scotland recovers and we ask ourselves what kind of country we want to become – I don’t want Boris Johnson in charge.”

Quite.

Whatever happens in England, whatever deal is done, whatever pain that inflicts on British voters – the architects of Brexit must person-up and take full responsibility.

Scotland meanwhile is quietly preparing for the moment we can remould this country ourselves and start dealing with European neighbours as equals.

Start as you mean to finish my mum used to say.

Scotland started 2016 as an outward-looking, pro-European country determined to modernise its democracy, quit neighbour-blaming and end the elitism of ages.

It ends 2020, the very same way whatever maelstrom of Brexit blame is now unleashed at Westminster.