A no-deal Brexit would be ‘catastophic’ for British farmers, Minette Batters warned for the umpteenth time this week. Speaking to Sky News, the NFU president warned leaving the EU without a deal would spell disaster for British sheep producers, who would face high tariffs on exports to Europe. With 40% of British lamb currently exported to France, many farmers would go out of business and a large percentage of the British sheep flock would be slaughtered, she said.
What’s more, a no-deal Brexit would make it impossible for Britain to uphold its standards on things like animal welfare and the environment, she warned. “We don’t want to import food that would be illegal for our farmers to produce here and that’s the big issue,” she said. “Every member of the public I speak to wants to retain these values but in a no-deal we couldn’t do that.”
Of course, none of this should come as a surprise to our politicians, who have been warned repeatedly of the danger a no-deal Brexit would pose for British farmers and the wider food industry.
And it isn’t just about food and farming. Philip Rycroft, the civil servant who was until March the head of the government’s Brexit department, recently told the BBC’s Panorama that a no-deal Brexit would be “fraught with risk” for the UK. “It would be a very abrupt change to our major trading relationship”, he said.
As October looms ever closer, Brits are clearly getting worried. According to a new survey by Blis, 40% of people in the UK are now stockpiling goods like food, medicine and clothes in fear there will be post-Brexit shortages.
And some MPs are taking heed of the warnings, with Tory rebel Dominic Grieve today launching a fresh bid to stop the next prime minister forcing through a no-deal Brexit without parliament’s consent.
But Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt have both now said they would back a no-deal Brexit if necessary, with Johnson this week repeating his commitment to stick to the October deadline ‘come what may’.
Johnson’s gung-ho approach to Brexit is not winning him any fans in the remain camp, as sausage brand Heck discovered after a publicity shoot at its Yorkshire factory – where he was presented with ‘Boris Bangers’ and adorned with a sausage necklace – prompted hundreds of consumers to boycott the brand.
But he’s still odds-on favourite to become our next prime minister, with latest polls suggesting he has an unassailable lead over Hunt as the time for the Conservative Party’s 160,000 members to choose their next leader draws closer.
We can only hope, then, that Johnson’s no-deal Brexit bluster is all bravado, and he’s got a cunning plan to avoid that scenario. Otherwise, as Batters keeps warning, our food and farming industry is being led to the cliff-edge like lambs to slaughter.
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