BUSINESS closures linked to food shortages caused not by the global pandemic but by Boris Johnson’s Brexit parochialism and board-game politics is galling.

Choice is diminishing on the shelves. Some of it is down to businesses cutting back their range because of staff shortages, other brands we won’t see again because the manufacturer has gone bust.

There is a warning from food producers of a two-tier system “where high-quality British food is out of reach for many struggling consumers”.

Housebuilders have warned of cost hikes amid materials issues, and concrete shortages threaten infrastructure projects like Edinburgh trams extension.

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The British Meat Processors’ Association has warned that food supply chains are on the edge of collapse, while the British Poultry Council says the restrictive nature of the UK’s immigration lottery has prompted it to call for poultry supply chain workers to be placed on the skilled worker list and shortage occupation list “as well as reducing unnecessary thresholds on salaries and skills”. 

It said the UK Government is "twiddling its thumbs" while production suffers.

It could be about to get a whole lot worse for hauliers, producers and consumers come October. The chaos at the start of the year was enough for the UK Government to push back a raft of border checks on imports until then.

The move was, perversely, welcomed as it gave some breathing space at borders, but probably pointless as rather than being in a better place, Brexit has pushed Britain into a deeper ditch, when it might have been wiser to just wait.

In the longer run, to have bullied Brexit through in the unprecedented times of coronavirus could well be one of the factors vying for space high up the list of reasons for the downfall of the Johnson establishment.

In his Called to Account column this week, business editor Ian McConnell raises the challenge: “As chicken runs out amid Brexit woe, is Johnson brave enough to get shortages Britain working?”

He writes: “So the news from Nando’s, while disappointing for some lovers of its marinated chicken, will have come as no surprise at all for people in the business world and for many consumers who are fast becoming inured to Britain being a place you can no longer get things, or at least not when you need them.”

Elsewhere, they range from tech to sustainable materials producers but these businesses all have something in common, they are Scottish firms that have been bought up by foreign companies.

“Some familiar questions have re-emerged following the sale of a Scottish business that looks to have been valued at tens of millions of dollars,” writes deputy business editor Scott Wright in his Tuesday column this week. He asks: “How can we halt flow of Scotland’s best firms into overseas hands?”

Business correspondent Kristy Dorsey shines a light on greenwashing and the ESG revolution. “Keen to follow the money pouring from the public purse – and under pressure from investors seeking a more ethical and sustainable home for their savings – fund managers have also been piling into anything that looks like an eco-friendly company,” she writes. 

We hear of prospects anew this week as former Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson is appointed as a director of Baxters. The hiring of Baroness Davidson emerged in a Companies House filing, but the Scottish soup giant declined to tell the business editor how much the pay packet is for that job.