Behold the United Kingdom, a damp, self-important archipelago that once circumnavigated the globe to steal everyone else’s lunch, now finding itself incapable of packing its own. The Guardian, that tireless purveyor of artisanal angst and lukewarm takes, has finally noticed that Britain is staring into the refrigerator of the future and finding nothing but a flickering lightbulb and a jar of expired neoliberalism. While the rest of the world—from the stoic, bunker-dwelling Nordics to the pragmatists in Brasilia—is busy squirrel-hoarding grain like they actually intend to survive the century, the UK remains tethered to the delusional fantasy that 'The Market' will provide.

The Guardian’s editorial board, clutching their organic cotton tote bags in a state of mild panic, points out that while Sweden, Finland, and Norway are rebuilding their Cold War-era strategic reserves, the British government is essentially telling its citizens to 'Keep Calm and Buy a Tin of Spam.' It is a masterclass in the kind of intellectual rot that occurs when a nation decides that history ended in 1989 and that logistics is something that only happens to other, less 'sophisticated' people. The Nordic countries are stockpiling food; Germany is checking its warehouses; even Egypt and Bangladesh, nations that actually understand what a crisis looks like, are boosting their buffers. Meanwhile, the UK sits on its heels, murmuring incantations about 'global trade' and 'private sector efficiency' as if Adam Smith’s invisible hand is going to materialize a sourdough loaf during a climate-induced wheat failure.

Let’s look at the sheer, unadulterated hubris of the British position. The official strategy, such as it is, rests on the belief that food security is a matter of price, not supply. It’s the logic of a man who thinks he’s safe during a famine because he has a very high-limit credit card, oblivious to the fact that you can’t eat plastic or tap-to-pay for a calorie that doesn't exist. This 'just-in-time' delivery model, which treats the global supply chain as a flawless, frictionless machine, is the ultimate fetish of the managerial class. It’s a system designed for a world that no longer exists—a world of stable climates and cooperative geopolitics. In the real world, the one where the Suez Canal gets blocked by a sideways boat and half the planet’s topsoil is currently blowing away, 'just-in-time' is just another way of saying 'too late.'

And then there is the government’s advice to the proles: stockpile it yourselves. It is the final, pathetic gasp of a state that has entirely abdicated its reason for being. If the citizenry is responsible for their own strategic food reserve, what, exactly, is the point of the government? If we are reduced to hiding cans of peaches under our floorboards because the geniuses in Whitehall couldn't be bothered to maintain a grain silo, then the social contract hasn't just been breached; it’s been used as kindling for a desperate bonfire. The Right sees this as 'personal responsibility,' which is their favorite euphemism for 'you’re on your own, good luck not starving.' The Left, represented here by The Guardian, sees it as a failure of 'progressive policy,' which is their favorite euphemism for 'why isn't the government taxing someone more to build a nicer warehouse?'

Both sides are equally useless. The Right’s devotion to neoliberal dogma is a form of religious fundamentalism, where 'The Market' is an infallible god that must not be insulted by the presence of a public buffer. To them, a state-owned grain silo is a gateway drug to full-blown Bolshevism. The Left’s solution is to write furrowed-brow editorials lamenting the lack of a 'strategy,' as if a 500-page white paper could be ground into flour and baked into a baguette. They all seem to forget that when the ships stop coming and the harvests fail, nobody cares about your ideological purity or your nuanced editorial stance.

The UK is currently an island of people who think that because they can order a pizza on an app, they have solved the basic biological problem of survival. They view the rebuilding of food reserves in places like Finland or Brazil as a quaint, slightly paranoid relic of a more primitive age. In reality, it is the British who are the primitives, worshipping a digital idol of commerce while the actual, physical world—the one made of soil, rain, and calories—prepares to deliver a very painful lesson in reality. The Guardian thinks Britain 'can no longer trust markets alone.' I would go further: anyone who trusts a market to keep them alive in a collapsing biosphere deserves exactly what they’re going to get. Unfortunately, they’ll be taking the rest of us down with them, one empty pantry at a time. The sheer boredom I feel watching this slow-motion train wreck is only matched by the disgust I feel for a nation that thinks 'efficiency' is an acceptable substitute for dinner.