Soy Sauce - The New Brexit Chimera

Alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and his pals are desperate to put something, anything, before the public to demonstrate that Brexit has benefits. Long gone are ideas like another £350 million a week for the NHS, or indeed that the UK held all the cards and could choose the path it wanted after leaving the EU.

This one isn't from Japan ...

... and neither is this one

But we should not be downhearted: news came last night from the Ministry of Truth that something, somewhere would actually be cheaper after Brexit. The problem was that it wouldn’t. The DIT had told “The bakers used a lot of soya sauce in the first challenge on GBBO, so it's a good thing it will be made cheaper thanks to our trade deal with Japan … Under WTO terms, the tariff on soya sauce is 6%. Under our deal, they will be 0%”.

Who is this Soya Sauce of which you speak? Meanwhile, James Felton was not adding this claim to his basket. “Soy sauce will be cheaper! To clarify, no it won’t”. Jim Cornelius had the longer version: “It will be no cheaper than it is now. And, because Kikkoman’s is made in the Netherlands and Blue Dragon in Poland, and the majority of soy sauce consumed in this country is NOT imported from Japan, the rolled over EU-Japan deal barely affects anyone’s soy sauce”. And no EU trade deal makes it more expensive.

Fine Gael TD Neale Richmond could afford the cynicism, as he’s in an EU member state: “So it won’t be made cheaper? Also how much of the UK’s soy sauce is actually imported from Japan? Doesn’t the majority come from the Netherlands. Finally, what is SOYA sauce?” Jim Pickard of the FT parsed the official line. “Soy sauce was going to be more expensive because of Brexit but now it's exactly the same why aren't you more grateful”.

Philip Lee, who you can tell as he’s a doctor, confirmed the source of the, er, sauce. “Hey there, just came to say that Kikkoman, one of the most popular Japanese soy sauce brands, is actually brewed in The Netherlands, which in case you didn't know is in the EU”. Peter Ungphakorn spelt out the reality. “It *would have been* more expensive than now if the UK had failed to roll over the EU-Japan deal … It *will be* more expensive if no UK-EU deal because a lot of it comes from the EU”. So what say the pundits to this news?

Steve Peers of the University of Essex concluded “Again: the government implies that Brexit reduces the cost of soy sauce. In fact a) it retains the cost of Japanese soy sauce; b) if no deal with the EU, *most soy sauce imports will be MORE expensive*. Gaslighting charlatans”. And LBC host James O’Brien correctly identified the desperation.

“The disingenuousness here is nauseating, of course, & the blatant politicking deeply concerning. But what’s most significant is that they are *already* reduced to casting imported soy sauce staying the same price as some sort of Brexit ‘win’”.

And before anyone says “I’ve got a bottle of Lee Kum Kee in the fridge”, that’s brewed in, er, China. It’s almost as if the Government is reduced to fibbing for kicks.

There is still no discernible benefit from Brexit. I’ll just leave that one there.

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