Unpicked apples in a Cambridgeshire orchard, September 2022.

In November 2021, despite suspecting it did not prevent infection, the Government made vaccination against the Covid 19 virus compulsory for care home workers. They subsequently pledged to extend it to all workers in the health sector and then possibly all sectors of employment. The news of this spread like wildfire in the closed off migrant communities working in the UK, many who had come from former Communist countries who had toiled under elites that had little care for their welfare. This, and the economic uncertainty caused by the inept handling of the Pandemic precipitated the exodus of around 1.3 million migrant workers from the UK and left the country unable to perform basic tasks like gathering the harvest. The absence of these workers, and the comparative scarcity of goods contributed in part to an inflation rate of over 11%, the highest in 40 years.