If you have spent time this week watching Andy Murray taking further steps along his journey from awkward taciturnity to national treasure helped by a metal hip and an indomitable desire to compete, the presence of a meaningful number of spectators on Centre Court will have been an important ingredient in the mixture of frustration and elation. Only the absence of crowds on Henman Hill will have given away that spectator numbers at the All England Club’s grounds as a whole have been substantially restricted. As we continue our national journey from lockdown to life without restrictions, we have got used to a semblance of the old normal grafted on to the current reality. And yet with numbers of new infections snowballing, there remains an air of unreality. Those numbers are now at a level which has previously driven strict lockdown. At the moment, the government’s statistical analysis and a degree of political freedom created by the introduction of a new Secretary of State for Health are enabling members of the Cabinet to express confidence that July 19th will be the day. Look out for the slow leakage of signals over the next couple of weeks as to whether it will or it won’t.

Although the imminent next stage of wind down of the furlough scheme and its impact on business survival and employment figures in some sectors is one to watch, the continuation of jab away and steady as she goes as the major Covid policy have meant that the week’s bigger questions have been about labour shortages, the ongoing impact of Brexit and another by-election dominated by division and protest.

The good news in those columns this week has been Nissan’s decision to invest substantially in its automotive manufacturing operations near Sunderland. In the run up to the Brexit vote and in the subsequent negotiations of terms, there were real concerns that multinational corporations like Nissan, who were attracted to set up in the UK in the first place because it provided a manufacturing base in the EU, would wind down or pull out if we left. In many cases, those fears have not materialised, and this week’s announcement is welcome news for the UK as a whole and for the labour market in the north east of England.

The less positive news is that a combination of Brexit and postponement of training and qualification processes during the Covid lockdowns is creating labour shortages. Whilst the Brexit campaign focused on a desire to control immigration from the EU, there was a notable lack of analysis during the campaign of the extent to which the UK was reliant on workers coming in from the EU to fill substantial numbers of jobs in various sectors. We have already seen stories from the hospitality sector about some businesses not being able to open up as fully as they are now permitted to do because of unavailability of staff, and there is a growing awareness that the transport industry is suffering from an absence of drivers. Those running transport companies have seen this coming for some time as traditional sources of new drivers have dried up, younger people have not been attracted to life on the road and the average age of their pool of drivers has crept up and up. For a while, availability of drivers from overseas helped to plug the gap, but many have left the UK, fewer are able or willing to come here to work and the cocktail has been further enriched by 30,000 missed HGV driving tests due to Covid restrictions. No Haribos makes an eye catching story, but if we struggle to get basic items into the shops, we’ll see the return of panic buying and some members of our community will suffer

And then there’s protest expressed through by-elections. It’s curious that during a period in which we have seen the nation rally around Captain Sir Tom, extraordinary effort from volunteers and communities working and socializing together in a way not seen for some years, in some respects the divisions within our society can seem to be deeper than ever. Whether it’s safe to draw substantial conclusions from by-elections is open to some debate, but so far in this Parliament, we have seen Hartlepool lost by the Labour Party in what seems to be a continuing expression of dissatisfaction at its failure to address economic disadvantage in the north, Amersham and Chesham going being lost by the Conservatives, partly over fear of how planning reforms might impact locally but also, it seems, due to a feeling that the Conservative government is only interested in wooing its new friends in the north and is neglecting those in the south. Last night saw the end of a pretty nasty campaign in Batley and Spen where the Labour Party just held off the dual challenges of the dissatisfaction that drove the result in Hartlepool and the intervention of George Galloway and his brand of political opportunism. It all shows what a challenge a governing party which in its own general election campaigning happily tuned into expressions of discontent in the north has now got in healing the divisions which it has, in part, itself promoted.

This Saturday, I have an appointment with the television at 8 o’clock on Saturday when I hope that the emotional capital invested in beating Germany last Tuesday does not lead to that match proving to have been England’s cup final. By that time, I plan to have covered around 46 of the 50 km that I will be walking or cycling in 50 hours over the weekend to support the efforts of our friends at The DPO Centre to raise funds for the St Helena Hospice in Colchester. It’s surprising and sobering to reflect on how many of our lives have been touched directly or indirectly by the invaluable service and support that hospices offer. If you can help, the just giving page is at https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/thedpocentre

Have a good weekend!

Ian Waine leads Prettys’ Corporate Services Team and has advised on a large number of corporate recovery and corporate restructuring cases over the last 30 years. He can be contacted at 07979 498817 or iwaine@prettys.co.uk.