The government is failing to ensure we can get basic goods but the opposition is still wary of blaming Johnson’s botched deal

It has become the Voldemort of British politics, the word few in government or opposition will breathe out loud. Once repeated with numbing frequency, it is now the cause that dare not speak its name. I’m talking about Brexit – there, I said it – and when I say “cause”, I’m not describing it as a righteous mission: I mean Brexit as a central explanation for the multiple crises currently afflicting us.

Cast your mind back to the major shortage before the other two major shortages, the one that was making headlines before the lack of petrol to run our cars or the dearth of domestic gas to heat our homes: namely, the shortage of CO₂, used for fizzy drinks, in meat production and to keep food fresh. Can you guess which part of the UK was blissfully unaffected by that problem? Open a can of pop if you said Northern Ireland, and treat yourself to another if you knew the reason why: because Northern Ireland remains part of the single market for goods, which means its bottling plants could get their carbon dioxide supplies from continental Europe. The rest of the UK had no such luck, with the government forced to pay an undisclosed but doubtless hefty chunk of our money to a US company to keep two CO₂ plants open, because … Brexit.

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Source: The Guardian