Eight million Britons unable to buy essential food items in last fortnight

- protest can be very effectively suppressed

- media remain in favour of the government (and will do all the way down)

- incredibly weak opposition

- no organizing locus outside of media and opposition

- no tradition of mainland political violence

- not actually that bad

- if the UK can shrug off 138k deaths from COVID, and the ongoing crisis of foodbanks, we can shrug this off too

When the newspaper says "unable to buy essential food items", they just mean that there was some items out of stock, not that there was no food in the shop.

If there's no beef today, you can still buy something else.

People were willing to accept this for Brexit happening. It has been made clear shortages were going to happen, it's been made clear voters expect it. It's no surprise there is no anger it has been expected.

Basically every report said this would happen, the government dismissed it as 'project fear' and still refuses to admin that it has anything to do with brexit.

I'm sure it was brought up internally in the government, but they won the election by promising to deliver sunshine and rainbows brexit even though they had no way of doing so. Addressing it before it became a problem would've looked bad, so they didn't, and the pandemic provided a convenient excuse.

It's a great question. Of course it was widely considered. This should come as a surprise to nobody. And yet, here we are.

You might ask the same question about Trump. Surely someone in charge - someone with authority - should have seen the trainwreck a mile off, and done something about it?

The shocking truth is that there's no one with both common sense and overriding authority that prevents catastrophic wrong turns. This was absolutely an expected outcome of Brexit, by anyone with a clue. The trouble is that half the general population doesn't have a clue. Why did the government ask them? Because the party in charge at the time had a splinter faction led by some very radical, very loud voices, and it was beginning to cost them votes. They hoped to put the issue to bed by calling a referendum. Having done so, it was political suicide not to follow through even though it wasn't technically "binding".

Largely it's a matter of various people acting in their own selfish best interest at the expense of the interests of the country, and convincing a bunch of useful idiots to follow along.

> From what I understand people were willing to go through this for Brexit to happen.

Well, some people. And even then, this wasn't brought up by the Leave campaign - they were all sun-lit uplands, etc. Nothing negative would come from Brexit! etc.etc.

49% didn't want it to happen though. At least they would be mad, right?

Almost certainly.

Now, if it comes to a choice between sharply increasing wages plus a crash training programme for HGV drivers, or doing nothing and letting the shelves empty, guess which one is going to happen ..

Politics and economy don't always agree. The government promised higher wages for domestic work force, but the companies aren't willing to pay for that promise. That's why we have these "shortages" of things. It's a game between the economy and the politics to see who caves first.

> People will be more comfortable moving to the UK, and working.

On what visa (be specific)? A big part of Brexit has been making it harder for people to come to the UK and work.

>There are labour shortages across the UK because people are still being told to self-isolate if they have contact with someone who is COVID+

Not if they have been vaccinated.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/self-isol...

>I’ve been in many shops and they’re fully stocked. Every fuel station has petrol and diesel

Yet I cycled past a closed petrol station yesterday and couldn't buy everything on my shopping list last week.

Neither your point nor the article are correct of course and a lot depends on where you live in the country.

Move along nothing to see.

Along the same lines of "Covid hasn't hit my family, so clearly it doesn't exist."

Every petrol station I’ve driven past in the last week has had giant queues or (more commonly) been shut for lack of fuel. SE England.

Congratulations, you're not one of the 8 million.

Meanwhile my parents had to eat cupboard food for dinner because their local Co-op looked like this: https://imgur.com/a/a2aEaxG

A few Gladwells of anecdata: our local ASDA (big but not a megastore) has had reasonably frequent empty shelves in various products. I think the medium-large Tesco down the road has also had empty shelves (but that's secondhand from people I know who shop there.) Similarly secondhand, from family up north, the major supermarkets up there have been missing products.