I trotted around the streets of east Northants yesterday morning delivering leaflets for Beth Miller, the Labour candidate for Corby, and then put on my suit and tie and headed into London for the Greener UK hustings.
This was a chance, a very rare chance, for the environment to be centre stage in political discourse in the run-up to 8 June. We were to be treated to the views of Dr Thérèse Coffey (Parliamentary under secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, Conservative parliamentary candidate for Suffolk Coastal), Baroness (Kate) Parminter (Liberal Democrat spokesperson for environment, food, and rural affairs), Barry Gardiner (Shadow secretary of state for international trade and shadow minister for climate change and Labour parliamentary candidate for Brent North) and Caroline Russell (Green London Assembly member, spokesperson on transport and parliamentary candidate for Islington North), and all chaired by that bloke off the telly who is chair of the Woodland Trust, Clive Anderson.
There were lots of my mates in the room and that made it fun but it was basically a low-key affair. I don’t think there was a journalist present – so it’s unlikely you will read all the gory details in today’s papers. But there were some interesting things that emerged and I’ll tell you about them in blogs over the next few days.
Let’s start with a question on agriculture asked by, well, by me actually. It’s a bit like this post and asked what each of the parties would do with the freedom to re-design agriculture policy. The Greens, LibDems and Labour were all on the same page really – public money for public goods. There appeared to be a desire to limit payments because 80% of the money goes to 20% of the farmers (the big farmers); everyone likes soil all of a sudden; soils should store water and the countryside is needed to protect the towns from flooding; food shouldn’t be stuffed with pesticides; trees are good; neonics are bad.
More interesting things: there are 100 harvests left on Earth unless we deal with soil quality (Greens); Liam Fox (the only Fox who should be hunted with hounds IMHO) is chatting to the Cairns group in WTO and we might just be heading, via a hard Brexit, to dumping the possibility of subsidies which deliver public goods (Labour criticising the Tories); and although rewilding is good, involuntary rewilding is not a good thing (LibDems).
There is also the assumption that small farmers are the salt of the earth and good for the environment whereas large farmers aren’t. This is not, in my view, even a useful rule of thumb yet alone a guiding principle. The thinking isn’t very advanced and we didn’t see a great deal of evidence that anyone in opposition would know what to do with the Brexit opportunity of throwing agriculture policy up in the air and starting again.
But surely the minister of the party who called this election to get a Brexit mandate would mesmerise us with the opportunities ahead? I somehow doubt that Therese Coffey has often mesmerised anyone; she is quite good at saying something fairly sensible, saying it quickly and then keeping her head down. It’s a pity that she says it in a condescending and supercilious manner. Dr Coffey does know what her manifesto says though – she confirmed that the great Brexit opportunity would be used by keeping things the same for the coming parliament and having a think about things. It’s all rather thin and immediately recalls Theresa May’s answers to questions on Monday evening – give us a strong mandate to do something that we can’t tell you what it is. To be fair, Dr Coffey was a Remainer (like me) and she might be thinking that some of the people that got us into this mess ought to have some idea of what the future might look like. But as with all other aspects of Brexit, no-one is telling us what the government is aiming for, and nor are they asking us what we want – but vote Tory for a strong muddled future.
I wasn’t a lot further forward in knowing what farming would look like in the future, but never mind, it’s only 70% of our land area, and we are only investing £3bn per annum, and it’s only where our wildlife lives (in ever-diminishing numbers).
The NGOs need to do some hard intellectual work on this subject to influence the debate. Are they up to it? And are they up for it?
And if we are going to have a great national debate about the countryside…when?
More on the hustings later.
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It’s hard to tell what most of the NGOs are thinking, on the future of farming support after Brexit. I’ve thrown my Pebble in the Pond, as you know. And I’m planning to do some more work on it if I can get the funding.
Perhaps we shouldn’t wait around for the big NGOs (or whoever) to do the hard thinking. Perhaps we should gather together some old wizened brains and come up with something ourselves.
Miles – my brain is wizened and I’d be up for that.
excellent. After the election then….
It sounds like a more enjoyable debate than the NW Election debate that was aired on the BBC last night. With the panel including three very bright and articulate politicians; Lisa Nandy (Lab), Lisa Smart (LD) and Stephanie Pitchers (Green), viewers across the NW might have expected to enjoy a high standard of debate. Sadly the debate was sullied by the boorish, mysoginistic and suprisingly aggressive manner in which Nigel Evans (Tory) and John Bickley (UKIP) repeatedly shouted over the woman whenever it was their time to speak – it was truly appalling, and also noticeable that the two angry right-wing men didn’t shout over each other, although to be fair there was barely a cigarette paper between their views. Last nights debacle was living proof that empty vessels do indeed make the most noise..
Ernest – ah yes, Nigel Evans whose constituency includes much of the Forest of Bowwland – the AONB with a Hen Harrier logo and no Hen Harriers. Where 502 of his constituents signed an e-petition for banning driven grouse shooting and a mere 96 supported grouse shooting. A denier of the fact that climate change is caused by human activities. Massive majority!
The sort of MP showing precisely why we need a move away from ‘safe seats’ and the first past the post system – surely PR would work in the UK, it’s tried and tested elsewhere.
Unfortunately First Past the Post has an inbuilt barrier to any change to a PR system since it is massively in the interest of the biggest two parties to keep FPTP and particularly so for the party in government, so they will never permit a change. The coalition government did provide the Lib-Dems with a rare opportunity to bring about electoral reform but unfortunately they fluffed it. We have to hope for another hung Parliament either this time around (frankly not very likely) or perhaps at the subsequent general election (who knows?) and a better shot at change by whoever holds the ‘king-maker’ position at that time.