When even the NAO predicts post-Brexit chaos, it's time to start worrying

The latest damning no-deal Brexit report from the National Audit Office was a treat for the media – by which I mean that part of it still committed to reporting news, as opposed to pro-Brexit propaganda.

It offered a veritable smorgasbord of headline options. For the Financial Times the main issue was trade flows. They could be cut in half if it happens. The BBC went with the danger of criminals exploiting gaps in preparedness. Always a good one that. Here at the Independent, we focused on the issue of timing: ministers have run out of it, and now there's no chance of improving a pretty dire situation.

As I read the report I was reminded of a Jackson Pollock painting. Your eye is drawn to a splash of red at the bottom right, or the prominent splats of yellow that sort of make up a triangle, because you need to find an anchor somewhere to cope with the seething chaos in front of you. Devastating doesn’t even begin to describe it.

But what about the Brexit-backing media, I hear you ask. What did they do? Well you know the answer: no sight nor sound of this detailed study. In some of the darker corners of the internet you’ll find people muttering darkly about Remainer conspiracies and calling for searches of the personal effects of those working at NAO towers to see if they uncover Liberal Democrat membership cards.

But that’s not going to cut it. The NAO doesn’t do politics. It’s staffed by pointyheads who draw conclusions from the evidence they’re presented with. Facts: those inconvenient things that keep on getting in the way.

The NAO points out that the government says only between 30 per cent and 60 per cent of traders will be “ready for Brexit", as the slogan goes – in part because of the vast burden of red tape they’re being asked to handle, and have been putting off. What’s telling about that is the range. It’s so large it’s basically nothing more than a guesstimate. Nobody really knows. We are told this is a worst case scenario. To that I’d say, how often do these “worst case scenarios” end up proving relatively optimistic when it comes to major projects in Britain?

The image of Eurosceptics chuntering about "Brussels bureaucracy", when they’re dumping tons of it on the entrepreneurs they fetishise, is just one of so many ironies they’ve become a sort of Brexit background noise.

For example, the report says the government admits the situation at our borders will be “less than optimal” for a time. That’s rather like describing a heart attack as a "temporary suspension of beats". I detect the hand of Michael “bumps in the road” Gove.

Gove, who’s in charge of no deal planning, is said to want a deal despite his posturing, and that no deal ad campaign which, this report makes clear, has proven singularly ineffective. If that’s true he has good reason to.

If the government is serious about inflicting a no deal gut punch on the British people – and parts of Conservative Party certainly are – it will obviously seek to ramp up the blame game when the “la la la” brigade has woken up to the harsh reality of what’s going to be going on at Dover, at Calais, on the shelves of the supermarkets, and on the lives of people like me who need drugs.

When this comes to pass, the government will need scapegoats on this side of the English Channel. There’s no way you can completely avoid taking some of the responsibility for the events this report warns of. So if I was Gove, I’d be on the phone to my former boss, Rupert Murdoch, to enquire about employment opportunities at Fox News.

No wonder there are reports this morning that the government will comply with the Benn Act, after all. The more sensible parts of Boris Johnson's administration know that inflicting this on the British people will kill the Tories off for good – a minor consolation to those who survive the mess, because it’ll be the winter of discontent times 1,000.

Gove and his chums desperately need time, but even that might not save them.

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