Thanks to Brexit, it’s far from a Lush life for business

Lush Cosmetics smell a rat, and this is a stench that not even their avobath or butterball bath bombs can detract from. Mark Constantine, co-founder of the ethical cosmetics company, has said that the UK leaving the European Union is to blame for its dramatic fall in European sales.

The company’s latest accounts revealed a 28% drop in sales across the continent in the year to June 2022 on pre-pandemic levels compared with a 10% fall recorded in the UK.

Though the company acknowledges that inflationary pressures and a social media boycott have also impacted their numbers, Constantine said in the Telegraph: “Is Brexit to blame? Our popularity in Europe has certainly waned since Brexit and we need to rebuild the love for our UK-owned brand across Europe.”

This is not the first time Lush has publicly criticised the government’s handling of Brexit. In 2017, the Dorset-based retailer threatened to take its business elsewhere and focus its expansion in Germany due to Theresa May’s lack of clarity over her Brexit plan.

In particular, the company noted that 20% of its staff did not hold British citizenship and, since the referendum, suddenly felt unwelcome and deeply upset.

Six years later, Constantine also told the Telegraph that this factory in Germany, which as promised Lush invested in after the EU referendum, has been losing money due to decreasing demand, meaning it was producing fewer products on site.

There is, however, another angle and offering it is the ever-helpful Richard Tice. On Twitter, the Reform Party leader, one half of the right’s gruesome twosome along with his partner Isabel Oakeshott, wrote: “Failing Lush buck passing on Brexit for its woes, when customers actually just sick of your woke stance on many issues like climate change and migrants.”

So according to Tice, severing ties with the trading bloc had nothing to do with Lush’s depleting European sales figures. Instead, the company has suffered the consequences of “going woke”.

First the banks and now bath bombs. Someone ought to call Nigel Farage.