Blame, Brexit and the great tomato shortage of 2023 

It’s funny how powerful a concrete example of something can be, isn’t it? The thing that brings a situation home to where you live. It’s a reminder of how basic, for all our theoretical sophistication, humans really are. Tell someone that bond yields are increasing at an alarming rate, and unless they are a bond trader they won’t feel that alarm in their gut. But tell them that it’s going to be impossible to buy salad in the supermarket, and unless they are Jordan Peterson, they will freak the hell out. 

The tomato shortage is what the young folk call ‘relatable content’, and those empty tomato shelves are a political Rorschach blot. You see in them whatever you want to see. Brexit, for instance. I see the sober and sorrowful announcements that they are now rationing tomatoes in Lidl, and hear the angry, defensive claims that it’s ‘a continent-wide problem’. 

Then I see the gloating social media accounts of people in Provence, in Hamburg, in Talinn or whatever, in which every corner shop seems to be a cornucopia, and there are people just swimming in great bulbous beef tomatoes of the most sumptuous scarlet.