Andrew Tettenborn

The Tories have messed up the return to imperial measurements

Credit: PA images

Cheers! You will soon once again be able to buy champagne and wine in pint bottles – Winston Churchill’s favourite measure. It will be possible for the first time since an overbearing Common Market (as it was then) effectively put an end to the practice in 1973. This is very good news, and I’m certainly looking forward to drinking my first pint of fizz – the ideal unit for one person – over dinner. 

But look further, and any satisfaction may well vanish in much the same way the bubbles in your celebratory glass might if you put it down too long. How this whole affair of reintroducing imperial measurements has been handled is a horrible sign of a flailing Tory administration that has lost its way.

Switching fully to imperial measurements wouldn’t even have involved much logistical difficulty

Even though compulsory use of metric measurements played a large, if subliminal, part in the Brexit saga, this is not an end to it.

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