Brexit: Even Breakfast Will Cost More

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if just one week went by without us discovering that Brexit is going to ruin yet another aspect of our lives? Sadly it won’t be this week. After headlines pointing out that London Tube fares are shooting up because of the Brexit-induced devaluation of the pound, along comes a new report explaining that the great British fry-up is about to get more expensive.

We might think of it as a British staple but the fry-up is a gloriously greasy amalgamation of global products. There’s orange juice from Spain, butter from France, oil from Italy and bacon from Denmark. So much for Full English. Not even our baked beans are British. Heinz is a US company, so perhaps we have to work on our relations with Donald Trump to protect access to our beloved beans.

Of course any ingredients imported from Europe are subject to the European Union’s trade regulations. If Britain leaves the EU without a trade deal that secures our access to the single market, we and our fry-ups will pay the price.

KPMG, a Swiss cooperative accountancy firm based in Amsterdam, had a stab at working out the extra cost that such a hard Brexit would impose on our favourite calorific breakfast. If May sticks to her hard Brexit plan and the UK has to fall back on the general trade rules of the World Trade Organisation it could add £3 to the cost of a family fry-up, with the overall price for the necessary groceries rising by nearly 13%.  The shopping list of a family-sized grocery story expedition for breakfast would rise from £23.59 to £26.61, according to KPMG’s number-crunchers.

Of course the report had wider implications than breakfast. The short and medium term potential impacts of Brexit are a predicted 10-25% depreciation in the pound and a 0.5-1.5% higher inflation rate. Long term impacts include a smaller workforce, a 4.4% rise in the average tariff rate, 5-10% fall in trade and a 1-2% increase in the Government’s Budget deficit each year. Overall KPMG believes that Britain’s imported food and drink will be worst affected by a hard Brexit.

In hindsight we should have seen this fry-up fiasco coming. For months before the referendum our politicians kept warning us that “Brexit means breakfast” and none of us listened. Turns out it was a hidden warning and now we’re all toast.

by Jo Davey

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