Environment secretary urges Britons to ‘cherish’ turnips amid food shortages

Thérèse Coffey’s championing of UK ‘specialisms’ causes one Labour MP to retort: ‘Let them eat turnips!’

The UK environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, has caused a furore after she suggested people should “cherish” seasonal foods such as turnips as bad weather cleared supermarket shelves of tomatoes and other fresh produce.

“It’s important to make sure that we cherish the specialisms that we have in this country,” Coffey told parliament. “A lot of people would be eating turnips right now rather than thinking necessarily about aspects of lettuce and tomatoes and similar.”