This Brexit business is starting to get serious.
A Brexit sandwich may consist of bread, and not much else
The convenient lunch-time snack invented by the Earl of Sandwich seems simple enough, but new research from Politico shows how it relies on a complex supply chain of European imports. […] The most British thing about the 4 billion sandwiches that Brits purchase from supermarkets each year is, more likely than not, the bread. Last week, Jim Winship, director of the British Sandwich Association, was mocked for pointing out Brexit’s threat to BLT sandwiches. And while it is unlikely that produce will completely run dry, the risks of a disrupted sandwich supply chain are looking very real.
The article jokes we might have to make do with chip butties. That’s fine by me: I’ve never thought of these things as strange or unusual, but perhaps they are.
The chip butty is the deranged nonsensical sandwich of my dreams
Besides my general attraction to trash and slop, what first drew me to the chip butty was the perfect combination of innocence and absolute dumbness. It’s a sandwich that would make Michelin inspectors shit themselves. It’s a sandwich that kids might design while on too much child cough medicine. It’s goofy and precious, like spaghetti tacos or hot dog lasagna, except it actually tastes good and doesn’t just exist for the sake of novelty.
But maybe these, too, are under threat in the coming years — even the chips for these quintessentially British chip butties could be European.
Brexit and the potato industry
In the year to April the UK imported GBP266m (EUR332.5m) more potatoes and potato products than it exported with sales into the country worth more than half a billion euros. The biggest deficit is in the trade of frozen fries with the UK importing GBP320m (EUR400m) more product than it exports with virtually all its imports coming from the EU.
Miscellaneous Details 