Who knew that amid all the agonising over Brexit, the loudest grumbles of all would come by way of our tummies? Truly it seems that the way to every British person’s heart is through their stomach. For whichever side of the table you’ve opted to dine at – and even if you’ve mostly contented yourself at home with a few bar of chocolate before a TV dinner – the fallout from the vote on European Union membership will have found its way to hit you right in the gut.
First, as a sort of premature appetiser, we had Liz Truss setting out her stall as Secretary of State for the Environment at the Tory Party Conference in 2014. After extolling the variety of British produce, and pumping her arms with enthusiasm as she declared ‘When it comes to British food and drink, we have never had it so good!’, the mood in the room soured when Truss turned her attention to imports. Speaking in bite-sized chunks, she stated with some agitation ‘We import two-thirds of all of our apples. We import nine-tenths of all of our pears. We import two-thirds of our cheese’ and after a long pause came the devastating analysis, ‘That. Is. A . DISGRACE!’, as the Tories cheered wildly in mouldy agreement.
Soon after we started the long process of preparing for the referendum. And once the votes had all been counted, we belatedly began to chew on the significance of what had already been stuffed down. Namely, we considered what Brexit might consist of given the box only says ‘Brexit’, argued over the right ingredients to add to the stew, and feeling anxious and peckish we focused on light tea and lunch.
In early October, as the portly Liam Fox settled into his seat at the Department for International Trade, the department sent out a tweet suggesting ‘France needs high quality, innovative British jams & marmalades’. Amid howls of derision, and ‘innovative’ recipe suggestions including sour grape, many people pointed out that Britain’s marmalades require imported oranges, and that France is anyway the second largest jam exporter in the world.
So not for the first time Liam Fox was left red-faced, and Britain had to keep its fruity preserves. And after having so long led the kitchen offensive, now the Conservative Party and Brexit supporters found themselves skewered. Because for many good British food consumers, the first indication of a potentially poisonous Brexit was when Tesco pulled Marmite from its virtual shelves. The supermarket found itself in a dispute with Unilever thanks to the plummeting pound sterling, which also impacted brands from PG Tips and Ben & Jerry’s to Pot Noodle and Hellmann’s mayonnaise.
Swiftly on the apron strings of the Marmite fiasco, we witnessed the missing peaks and barren terrain of bars of Swiss Toblerone. By reducing the weight of its 400g and 170g iterations of milk chocolate with honey and almondy nougat, Mondelēz International had customers wishing for a price rise instead, lamenting the loss of the traditional British Christmas, putting all plans for casual airport trips firmly on hold. At least without the lure of Toblerone, holidaying Brits might think twice before hassling with visas and heading off abroad.
Which brings us to this week and Boris Johnson, as much a glutton between slices of bread as between the sheets, who as Foreign Secretary saw fit to greet an Italian economics minister with some foodie-related threats. In trade discussions with Carlo Calenda, Italy’s Minister of Economic Development, Johnson reportedly called for easy access to the single market without freedom of movement, on the basis that Italy wouldn’t want to lose out on Prosecco sales.
Sales of Prosecco in the United Kingdom last year overtook those of champagne, reaching a fizzy £339 million, but to Johnson’s appeal Calenda had a cutting retort. He mocked British cuisine, suggesting that if Italy lost out in the realm of Prosecco, ‘you’re going to lose some fish and chips exports. The difference is I’m going to lose to one country, you to twenty-seven’. ‘Putting things on this level is a bit insulting’, he added, but once we’ve made them pay for insulting our fried foods, it will be those on the continent left with a lump in their throat.
