Will food security issues rise up the agenda of a post-Johnson Government?
Our relationship with the EU
As we have repeatedly stated, this Brexit is already gravely affecting our food supplies, at serious risk.
Most of the Brexit-related impacts on our food supplies would disappear overnight if the UK joined the single market. Yet because of the lack of discussion on this Brexit and its effects, any suggestion of a different order of things, is dismissed, sometimes in a way that betrays ignorance of the issues, as happened last week, before the damaging vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson yesterday evening (6th June):
- Tory MP Tobias Ellwood’s PoliticsHome article setting out the debate we need to have: We can upgrade Brexit and ease the cost of living by going back to the single market.
- A tweet from Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, which (a) linked to a Guardian account of the backlash, and (b) stated “Tobias is wrong” in an attempt to shut down the argument.
- This was followed on 3rd June by a post by David Allen Green: Why Tom Tugendhat is wrong: we can only move on from Brexit when there can be serious conversation about the United Kingdom and the Single Market. (1)
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What other food security issues should be considered by a post-Johnson Government? Most importantly, will there be serious discussion about preparedness planning for future food shortages? as well as about how every household today can access the food they need for an active and healthy life? (2)
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(1) see also this timely WPR article It’s Time to Start Thinking About Britain After Boris by Alexander Clarkson indicates, there has been a policy vacuum in British debate over Europe. He points out, too, that the reemergence of a British Government with a more pro-European outlook would paradoxically put the EU under greater pressure to develop a clearer strategy toward the UK’s position alongside the EU system.
(2) Tellingly, the inadequate, inaccurately-termed ‘independent’ National Food Strategy Plan mentioned neither Brexit nor preparedness planning.
Nor, for that matter, about how to support households without economic access to sufficient supplies of safe, nutritious food, nor anything about food safety, assurance and integrity, nor about how to curb the corporations that damage human and planetary health, nor anything about population level interventions.