‘Preppers’ stock up in Britain as EU divorce date nears

LONDON — For almost as long as Britain and the European Union have been wrangling over Brexit, Melvin Burton has been preparing for a bumpy landing.

He’s growing vegetables, drying fruit and buying in bulk. He reels off the cornucopia of cans filling his shed and the cupboard under his stairs: “Tomato sauce, chopped tomatoes, corned beef, tuna, honey, baked beans, tins of ham.”

“I started buying stuff about a year and a half ago,” said the 45-year-old, who lives with his wife and 8-year-old son in a village near Cambridge. “No one seemed to be accepting that there was a real problem.”

Plenty of people think there is a problem now.

Britain is scheduled to leave the EU on March 29, but its departure terms are still unknown. A U.K.