From coffee to microchips – how the supply chain crisis is disrupting UK plc

All you need to know about who is affected and why it's the worst supply chain crisis since the 1970s

Fast food chains are running out of chicken. Hauliers' wage bills are going through the roof. Crops are rotting in the fields. The scale of Britain's supply chain meltdown is the worst since the 1970s, when the three-day week, power cuts and industrial disputes saw rubbish pile up in the streets.

Fast forward four decades and the shortages in modern Britain stem from Covid-19 disrupting an intricate network of global supply chains where the slightest problem throws the whole system. Brexit has added to the rebooted anarchy in the UK, with years of chronic underinvestment in people and infrastructure, both from government and business, painfully exposed.