“Get Brexit done” was the slogan that the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson raised repeatedly as he ran for election two years ago. Since then, the United Kingdom has pulled out of the European Union after more than four decades of membership and several years of wrangling over divorce terms.

However, the unplanned haste to go for Brexit has created several problems for Britain’s trade, including severely impacting the food sector in the country.

While Britain was part of the EU’s vast free trade single market, there were no barriers to people and goods crossing that border. The open frontier helped underpin the peace process that ended decades of Catholic-Protestant violence in Northern Ireland because if allowed the people there, whatever their identity, to feel at home in both Ireland and the U.K.

By taking the U.K. out of the EU’s economic order, Brexit has created new barriers and checks on trade. Both Britain and the EU agreed such checks could not take place on the Ireland-Northern Ireland border because of the risk to the peace process.

The alternative was putting a customs border in the Irish Sea — between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. But the new sea border has brought headaches and red tape for businesses, and has riled Northern Ireland’s Protestant unionists, who say it weakens Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom and threatens their British identity.

Another major impact has been the return to home of workers from mostly East European countries post Brexit. Though the Government of the U.K. gave enormous benefits during the post Covid period to see to it that its food sector doesn’t crumble, the real adverse impact has happened because of shortage of workers. Restaurants, even the major chains, are feeling the impact. If the chef is still there and has not moved back to his/her native country, then there are no waiters and bartenders. Some restaurants have to shut shop due to this while many big players are even opening 3 or 4 days a week. There are some streets in London where several eateries and food joints have closed in this year itself as the restaurant owners are finding it hard to meet the increased expenses and decreased earnings.

It was unplanned haste, perhaps also necessitated by the need to gain an advantage of the public emotions in the general elections, that the U.K. underwent Brexit without zeroing in on the consequences. The country will surely come out of the situation but in the process would leave several restaurants and food eateries closed, workers there without jobs and greater difficulties for the citizens trying to come out of the post-Covid havoc.