The country is within hours of coming to a grinding halt. The banks say cashpoints will run out of notes within the day. Hospitals are going to have to close because of a lack of fuel. Ford is poised to shut its European operations. Three quarters of petrol stations have run dry.

Not Brexit Armageddon next March but the fuel crisis of September 2000.

The hauliers’ blockade of fuel depots had brought the country to its knees. Tony Blair’s government was within hours of invoking the 1920 Emergency Powers Act. Luckily the public never knew how close we came because we managed to break the blockade in the course of the day.

But they knew enough about the chaos that Labour fell behind the Tories