If this is a big announcement…

This is the smallest, least consequential, big announcement you will ever see. Alex Sayer claims that she has been working with some of ‘the top people in government’ to launch a new group at the Tory Party Conference in Manchester (aka ‘the end of the line’ conference). She claims that she has got friends – that’s nice.

Let’s take a look at the impressive top people in government that make up the committee of Conservative Friends of the Countryside (CFoC).

• Sir Robert Goodwill – Sir Robert has been a junior minister (several middle-ranking jobs as Minister of State) but hasn’t been in government since his short stay at Defra (keeping the seat warm for George Eustice who was both his predecessor and successor in the job) over four years ago. He is the Chair of the EFRA Committee and succeeded Geraint Davies MP (Independent) when Davies was suspended from the Labour Party, and Davies was only the interim Chair taking over from farmer and tractor enthusiast Neil Parish. Sir Robert speaks up for shooting.
• Sir Bill Wiggin – Old Etonian, Bungalow Bill Wiggin has never held a ministerial position despite being an MP since 2001. The closest he got was a period as Shadow Secretary of State for Wales which ended back in 2005 when Michael Howard was the Conservative Party leader. Sir Bill is a keen shooter (and said to be a good shot).
• Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown – has been an MP since the early 1990s and has so far failed to land a ministerial position under any of the many Conservative Prime Ministers he has seen come and go. Sir Geoffrey is a keen shooter.
• Sir John Hayes – I don’t know much about him but he has been a Lincolnshire MP since 1997 and has held a variety of junior ministerial roles, although none for over five and a half years (that’s the last three PMs if you have lost count).

An interesting bunch perhaps, but not even their greatest admirers could say they were top people in government, or, to be frank, ever had been, and, to be frank, never will be. It will be interesting to see how they help steer CFoC to great things.

What great things? It’s difficult to tell from their website – click here – which mentions their campaigns against solar power (at least in a part of Lincolnshire where there is a local group campaigning) and wild fires  (at least in the Peak District where the Moorland Association produced a leaflet)  but is rather reticent about what they think about two other key issues, they say, for rural Conservatives, trophy hunting and firearms licensing.  It looks a ramshackle thing at the moment.

But hang on! There is a fifth member of the committee, one Amanda Anderson, formerly of the Moorland Association (Ah! That’s where the leaflet came from). Oh Amanda! Poor Amanda! Have you not had enough of old titled men with guns? You could do so much better for yourself than this.

In the unconvincing video, Alex Sayer takes a swipe at another odd right-wing group, which is trying to be a new political party, Rural Reactionaries I think it is called – see their website here and ‘news’ about them here.  They have a video too, courtesy of Fieldsports Channel, 27 minutes into the programme);

There is deep strategy behind this new political party according to Ian Gregory, although such strategy is absent, so far, from their website.

These two groups are fishing in the same small puddle for support from those who think that Defra is run by a load of pinko-towny-liberals. You see, Therese Coffey is really one of us – and we never knew!

 

 

 

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