We’re told that European Union rules are to raise food prices here in Britain:

Shoppers face higher grocery bills as more EU red tape looms

Higher shipping and raw materials costs and EU red tape threaten consumers' hip pockets, says British Retail Consortium

Some parts of this do not have simple solutions. Rising global shipping prices, rising prices of traded foods, well, that’s just what prices do sometimes. Some other parts would seem to have simple solutions though:

Further Brexit checks from October are expected to force retailers to pass on additional costs to shoppers, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) said.

Ah - Brexit checks and European Union rules are not the same thing. The first is something we’re doing to ourselves. The second, well, given that we’ve left the EU rules can only affect what we send out of our country to their, not what we bring in from there to here.

"We will likely see these costs filter through in the second half of this year, and with the additional Brexit red-tape this autumn, retailers may be forced to pass on some of these costs onto their customers."

That Brexit red tape is, again, what we are doing to ourselves, not what some others are doing to us. Which is what does mean that there’s a simple solution here. Stop doing this to ourselves.

After all, the general complaint here is that we are to be made worse off by this rise in food prices. So, we should take action to reduce the food price rises. Or even, in this instance, stop doing something silly that increases food prices.

Nigel Lawson took great glee in killing a tax - not just reducing the rate or changing the range of it, but actually killing off entirely - in each of his budgets. While we approve of that idea we do note that it’s entirely contrary to the spirit of this current age. We can still achieve that same goal though, that of making life better for the citizenry, by killing off red tape. Or even, kill a bureaucracy - action this day to quote another former Chancellor.