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    Brexit is an important factor in UK food security Semantics rule in regard to Russia and energy cost Archived Message

    Posted by John Monro on March 2, 2023, 7:32 pm, in reply to "The small price of sticking it to Putin"

    Re Bexit and food supplies in the UK, I think the tone of this article seriously downplays the problem. The writer appears to be pro-brexit and biased. Problems were evident long before Russia's attack on Ukraine Higher energy prices, truck driver problems, lack of workers in agriculture and the food industry, complications with food shipments across the new border. This is an extract of a BBC article of early 2020 About 30% of all the food we eat in the UK comes from the European Union, according to the British Retail Consortium (BRC) industry group.
    Britain imports nearly half of its fresh vegetables and the majority of its fruit, both mainly from the EU - and that's where the potential problem was.     Food security was one of the issues that should have been much higher in the debate before the referendum. To suggest people are overplaying Brexit is mistaken.

    In regard to the blame being place on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, then that's plainly wrong. Russia's attack was the excuse for the west to inflect the severest possible sanctions on that country, which included the economically suicidal decision to shut off Russian gas to Europe and restrict oil imports. These sanctions have been on the neoliberal agenda for years . Russia didn't do this, it was the collective west that decided the price was worth paying, Well, the US did but Europe seems to have been more stupid to actually pay the price. Is that semantics? I don't believe so , if sovereign nations make totally unforced decisions like this, then no-one else is to blame, including Russia

    In regard to wheat, sunflower oil and fertiliser etc, there have been physical restrictions on these because Ukraine and Russia are the world's largest suppliers. Russia's invasion then is a direct cause of these problems.

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