If this was the plan all along, why are we begging the foreign workers to come back? We've recently been flying fruit-pickers in from Barbados, Nepal and the Philippines, and now they're desperately trying to get EU lorry drivers back. We''ll be buying our Christmas turkeys from France and Poland because farmers here can't get workers for their farms. It's not so much about cheap labour as available labour. We don't have enough people to do the jobs.
British workers getting paid more is welcome, but we're going to very soon see prices rising faster than wages. Rampant inflation is just around the corner, just as the government is cutting Universal Credit by £20 a week. The poorest will be hit hardest as always.
The concept of Brexit is that we can invite workers to come into the country when we need them - they can't come and live here as of right. In order to attract foreign workers, we need to pay decent wages and that's beginning to happen.
The problems we're facing at present are a combination of 1. Transition to Brexit (emphasis on Transition) 2. Global pandemic 3 Europe-wide transport and energy problems
We have record employment - there are a huge number of job offers around, and Sunak is putting up £500,000m to train those losing jobs post furlough.