Simon Tisdall reports:

Apocalypse is an alarming idea, commonly taken to denote catastrophic destruction foreshadowing the end of the world. But in the original Greek, apokálypsis means a revelation or an uncovering. One vernacular definition is “to take the lid off something”.

That latter feat is exactly what Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, achieved last week, possibly inadvertently, when he suggested Britain was facing “apocalyptic” levels of food price inflation. Tory ministers fumed over what they saw as implied criticism of the government’s masterly economic management.

In fact, Bailey was talking as much about the drastic impact of Ukraine-war-related rises in food costs and food shortages on people in poorer countries. “There’s a major worry for the developing world as well … Sorry for being apocalyptic for a moment, but that is a major concern,” he said.

With most political and media attention narrowly focused on the emerging UK “cost of living crisis”, Bailey’s high-profile comments were timely – and revelatory. Months of warnings about a global tidal wave of hunger, rendered more urgent by Ukraine, have been largely ignored, not least by Boris Johnson’s aid-cutting government.

The cost of living is a problem in Britain. For UN agencies and humanitarian relief workers around the world, the bigger worry is the cost of dying.

Sounding the alarm again last week, António Guterres, the UN secretary general, said Ukraine-related shortages could help “tip tens of millions of people over the edge into food insecurity”. The result could be “malnutrition, mass hunger and famine in a crisis that could last for years” – and increase the chances of a global recession.

The World Food Programme estimates about 49 million people face emergency levels of hunger. About 811 million go to bed hungry each night. The number of people on the brink of starvation across Africa’s Sahel region, for example, is at least 10 times higher than in pre-Covid 2019. [Continue reading…]