[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Damien

The EU aren't saying they're going to stop selling us food or medicine.

The Government is worried about chaos at the ports physically bringing goods into the country. If he have hastily arranged customs checks then delays would be the problem. I think can just wave things though. As far as I can work out the Government don't actually know what the hell they're going to do so are saying they're stockpiling stuff to be 'reassuring'.

You can generally buy whatever you want from other countries if it's legal there, the issue is if it's legal here.

Agreed. There does seem to be quite little understanding of what no deal actually means. Carol Mortishead in today's Standard has a good attempt at clarifying some aspects of it.

Let’s be absolutely clear: walking out (“no deal”) is an English fantasy. It means chaos at UK airports and the Channel ports (the Government is already preparing to commandeer the M26 as a lorry park), chaos that will mean big financial losses for British exporters and importers.

Raab might say the EU will lose too. Indeed, they will lose but the 27 remaining states will carry on trading with each other and the world while the UK is gridlocked in a very expensive mire. And while Britain struggles with paperwork and lorry parks, will European businesses sit on their hands or will they rush to steal Britain’s customers in Europe and around the world?

The UK’s “no deal” trading arrangements will be tough and, initially, very uncertain. Under the WTO rules, Britain must apply the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) principle. It means you cannot offer one state a special tariff without offering it to all WTO members.

Average EU external tariffs are quite low (1.5%) but on certain important sectors are very high, in particular cars, about 10%. The Government would hope to agree a special deal on cars but the EU will never agree because it would have to offer that special tariff to every other WTO member state to satisfy the MFN rule. A tariff of 10% on cars would be ruinous in an industry where profit margins on new cars vary between 4% and 8%.

Walking out of the EU would be disastrous for industry and for agriculture, too, a sector at present protected by billions of euros of EU subsidy.

For example, sheep farmers benefit from the EU’s high external tariff of 12% plus €1700 (£1500) per tonne on lamb. Without a deal, UK farmers will face that tariff on exports of lamb to Europe. If we scrap tariffs in order to do overseas trade deals, cheap New Zealand lamb will flood the domestic market and Britain’s hill farmers will face ruin.

https://www.standard.co.uk/business/...-a3896096.html