After all the promises of a post Brexit Eldorado the government is now saying they will ensure "adequate food" (HERE) in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Not a feast mind, not a banquet, not even a hearty meal but adequate food! Theresa May thinks we should be comforted and reassured about food, medicine and blood being stockpiled (HERE). I really don't think many people will be quite so sanguine about it.
Mrs May probably won't go hungry if the shelves begin to empty and she certainly won't find herself being rationed at the checkout or wrestling with other housewives in Maidenhead over some lemons or a lettuce from Spain, if and when food shortages occur. This is The United Kingdom 2018, not Zimbabwe.
None of this was raised during the campaign, unless I missed it.
BoJo didn't mention it and Dominic Cummings, Campaign Director at Vote Leave, wouldn't have let him anyway. It's not the sort of message that looks good when painted on the side of a bus is it? Negative things were avoided at all costs. It was sunlit uplands all the way wasn't it?
Brexit is starting to look like being promised a free, all expenses paid luxury holiday in Acapulco but then being told there's a very small risk it might actually be fourteen days digging a fatberg out of a sewer in Neasden. People might begin to ask themselves what else is in the small print?
This no-deal contingency planning is getting some coverage in the press which is no bad thing. It might start to make leavers think a bit about what it was they voted for. If so, it will be a good message for remainers.
Of course, the other question is, is it realistic anyway to "stockpile" food. We import more than half of what we eat, with 30% coming from the EU. How much warehousing would you need to keep 30% of our food stored, even for a few days? Honda calculated it would need to world's largest building to stock parts for 9 days of production. How big a building would be needed to hold 30% of the food needed to sustain 65 million people? It's not feasible is it?
You might find warehousing for some processed, tinned or long-life foodstuffs for a few days but not longer. There would have to be some significant rationing and we would have to quickly adapt to eating a lot more home grown and seasonal things. No, stockpiling of food is an attempt to put pressure on the EU (which it won't) and reassure the natives (which it shouldn't).
Update: Sky News report (HERE) British retailers now saying that the stockpiling of food is not practical:
"Retailers do not have the facilities to house stockpiled goods and in the case of fresh produce, it is simply not possible to do so.
"Our food supply chains are extremely fragile and this is yet further demonstration of the need for an agreement on the backstop to ensure frictionless trade is maintained after the 29 March 2019."
It's amazing how little politiciansknow about their constituents or industry or how the modern world works. Stunning.
