‘Brexit to chop food bills’, said the headline in the Sun on Sunday this weekend. The paper ran some research from the campaign group Leave Means Leave, which claimed food prices could fall by hundreds of pounds a year if tariffs are axed after Brexit. Though nobody knows what deal we will strike with trading partners once we leave the EU, it’s worth exploring the basis of Leave Means Leave’s research. It hopes we will enter into a completely tariff-free world. No more eye-watering taxes slapped on the likes of Tate & Lyle’s imported sugar cane, which caused the company to lose £20 million last year. All that new-world wine and South American beef, which attracts a tariff starting at 13 per cent, should suddenly be free to enter Britain, free of any restrictions. Hooray for that. Proper free trade. Leave Means Leave’s research, however, has two fundamental flaws. I know a little about this, because food prices post-Brexit is a topic that I have been exploring for Channel 4 Dispatches, airing tonight.
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