Brexit jitters hit home...

A super blood wolf moon was seen in the skies above Sunderland this week ... clearly a portent of doom. Blame Brexit!

There’s certainly an element of blaming uncertainty over our leaving the EU on every ill going.

Any good or bad news in the stock market is, depending on your viewpoint, a sign of Brexit weakness or strength.

Tangible problems while we are waiting in limbo are harder to pinpoint.

On the world stage, whatever Brexit deal we end up with is going to have huge implications for big business.

What that means for our own community in the long term only time will tell.

But, as we reveal today, the Port of Sunderland is already bracing itself for a downturn.

The uncertainty we are all experiencing, courtesy of our warring MPs, is causing problems for our port.

Sunderland City Council’s Scrutiny Co-ordinating Committee has been told that Brexit was “impacting upon the willingness of companies to invest and trade significant volumes of cargoes” at the port.

A drop of £375,000 in trading surplus in 2019/20 has been predicted.

Coun Niall Hodson has said this is ‘terrifying’ to see. It’s certainly not good news, but gives a little indication of how uncertainty is giving business in our own community the jitters.

Which is a pity. The Port has been going from strength to strength in recent years and we would like to see that progress continue.

We’ve said it before, and we won’t tire of saying it: It’s vital that all parties put political point scoring aside and work together to get us out of this Brexit mess.

The uncertainty and doom-mongering is doing no-one any good.