AceNewsDesk – It is truth universally acknowledged that Clarkson’s Farm has done more to get Britain interested in agriculture than Countryfile has managed in 30 years. Rishi Sunak paid homage to the Diddly Squat crew in Downing Street last year. When the petrol-head-turned-pig farmer speaks out for rural England, ministers listen
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Sunak will thus be heartened to see the ex-Top Gear host and his sidekick Caleb Cooper speaking out against Mark Drakeford’s post-Brexit plans for Welsh farming. Cardiff’s answer to Salvador Allende has announced to farmers that side of Offa’s Dyke that they must now set aside a tenth of their farms to grow trees and another tenth as a wildlife habitat. Naturally, the sons of the soil saw this as an absurd socialist imposition. They have protested at a leadership debate between Drakeford’s potential successors.
A few tractors doing a go-slow is hardly the cask-strength behaviour common from their continent counterparts.
But the telly stars have nonetheless backed their Welsh brothers in arms, with the former branding the policy “completely daft”. Any mention of Drakeford’s abysmal administration is helpful to Sunak since it reminds England of the miseries of a Labour government in practice. Short of a Diddly Squat endorsement, the Prime Minister needs all the help he can get to keep the once-Tory shires onside. With apologies to Blur, this city dweller and successful fella has a very big problem in the country.
A new poll has found that Labour has over-taken the Conservatives in England’s 100 most rural seats. Boris Johnson won 96 of them in 2019; Sunak is expected to hold only 43. The Tory vote share has collapsed by 25 per cent.
That’s the same figure as the share of rural voters who still believe the Conservatives understand “rural communities and their way of life.” Rising energy prices, surging crime, unaffordable housing: deep England is ailing, and is holding the Government responsible.
Winston Churchill claimed that the Conservative “bond with the countryside was unbreakable”. But a swathe of Tory councils in rural villages and market towns were lost to the Greens last year.
A string of countryside by-elections have been lost since 2019. Sunak has already lost the Red Wall. Its Blue cousin is turning a worryingly sickly shade of yellow. The Tories can’t afford for their ‘Blue Hedge’ to be trimmed as well.
Accordingly, Sunak has become the first Prime Minister in 15 years to address the National Farmers Union’s conference. Farmers are, of course, a very small minority of England’s rural population. But they are the noisiest and most headline-grabbing element.
Fortunately, having more farmers per head in his Richmond constituency than any other in the country, Sunak is well-versed in rural matters for a man naturally more at home astride a Peloton than behind a tractor’s wheel. Technocrat he may be. But he is as comfortable with sheep-judging as he is with spreadsheets.
Sunak had two messages: je vous ai compris, and a pledge to stuff the farmers’ mouths with gold as far as he is able. “I’ve got your back”, he told the assembled agriculturalists, telling them they do “incredible work” which should be celebrated.
He acknowledged replacing the Common Agricultural Policy has been difficult. But he promised farmers would receive their subsidies in full, along with an extra £220 million for automation. He was gushing in his respect for the horny-handed sons of the toil. Unfortunately, it fell on deaf ears.
Minette Batters – the NFU’s boss – had to point out to Sunak that farmers did their work to make money, not out of blind love.
She lambasted Boris Johnson for imposing higher domestic animal welfare standards whilst signing free trade deals letting in lower-quality produce from elsewhere. She reeled off the cascade of challenges farmers have recently had to confront: Brexit, rocketing energy prices, flooding.
Rather than reassure his audience that the Government is on their side, Sunak instead made clear that the Tories aren’t entirely sure what the countryside is for, won’t cough up the funds required to genuinely deal with the problems plaguing rural communities, and haven’t yet resolved the post-Brexit tension between free trade and agricultural protection.
Victoria Vyvyan of the Country Land and Business Association recently argued that the rural economy is 19 per cent less productive than the national average. Around £4 billion is required to be invested in agriculture to close that gap. £220 million won’t touch the sides. Nor will it cut a crime rate that has risen three times faster in rural areas than elsewhere. Since the Government is prioritising expanding urban density, it be building the affordable housing required to keep rural youngsters from moving away.
In fairness to Sunak, it is not as if the other parties have a particularly compelling rural pitch.
Despite claims Labour is moving on from its “self-satisfied urban mindset”, Steven Reed’s reheated Blairite pledge to eliminate foxhunting in Keir Starmer’s first term is exactly what one would expect from a Shadow Environment Secretary who sits for Croydon North. Giving farmers greater freedom to build wind turbines and solar arrays on their land is very sensible. But it courts an immediate and obvious NIMBY backlash.
Standing athwart construction work yelling stop has been the source of recent Green successes. They made a net gain of 241 seats at the local elections, including an absolute majority in Mid Suffolk.
Ignoring both their party’s titular environmental credentials and the best efforts of Sunak and Michael Gove to pose as the Green Belt’s strongest soldiers, the Greens have won the support of disgruntled Tories by opposing housing developments and clean energy schemes. You couldn’t make it up!
Falling Conservative support in the countryside has come from rural votes believing the party has taken them for granted and has ceased to understand their needs. That’s hardly unfair. Countryside might cover 85 per cent of the UK’s land, but it doesn’t play a similarly-sized role in our national conversation.
The share of MPs with a farming background has fallen from 3.7 per cent in 1979 to 1.1 per cent today. Four decades of outsourcing agricultural policy to Brussels has left politicians will little knowledge or interest.
Striking a balance between protecting farmers and promoting free trade has been a fundamental source of Tory angst since Robert Peel and Benjamin Disraeli were squabbling over the Corn Laws.
But deciding between beef and liberty has become particularly urgent post-Brexit. Sunak tries to impress farmers by touting his refusal to back a Canada trade deal his two predecessors were keen to sign, even as his Business Secretary conjures into existence negotiations that the Canadians claim don’t exist. It’s an incoherent mess based on a lack of a real vision for the countryside.
“ England is the country, and the country is England,” said the last century’s finest Conservative leader. Until the Tories make up their minds about what they think England’s green and pleasant land is for, they will continue to see the trust of rural voters slip away.
Shifting subsidies towards promoting the preservation of nature is very noble. But is it compatible with Sunak’s new enthusiasm for promoting food self-sufficiency? He can’t just force consumers to buy more home-grown produce. Nor can he wish into existence the million or so small-scale farms we need to survive the coming crash.
Our countryside is our greatest asset. Every Englishman has a stake in preserving and promoting it – a Tory more than most.
There is much more to rural England than just farms, and radical action on crime and support for local economies must be central to any Sunakian effort to win back disillusioned rural voters. Nonetheless, the Conservative Environment Network’s new manifesto for agriculture would be a good place for the Prime Minister to start. He has already adopted its Clarkson-inspired proposal to make it easier for farmers to open shops without planning permission.
Indeed, more picking of the thoughts of Didley Squat Farm would do Sunak little harm. Perhaps he ennobled the wrong Chipping Norton celebrity.
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