Tomorrow our Prime Minister will set out her thoughts on what Brexit means – presumably beyond ‘Brexit means Brexit’. Are you fed up with Brexit already? Well, there are years and years to go so you’d better get used to it. She is expected to say we are heading for a ‘hard Brexit’ (according to…
Category: THE POLITICS: Ministers, MPs, government policy
If only…
David Mitchell, or David Mitchell Coren as we might call him, wrote an excellent column on telling the truth yesterday. One of his points, with which I agree, is that the good guys need to be squeaky-clean in this so-called post-truth age. We will only live in a post-truth age if we allow truth to…
Brexit, CAP and grouse moors 2
The disappearance of income support for grouse moors in a post-Brexit world is apparently on the cards – and is a sound policy route to follow as a small aspect of making our money work better for taxpayers, consumers and farmers alike. But the other side of the coin is that more money should be…
Brexit, CAP and grouse shooting
Sometimes several streams of argument begin to run together and form a river. This week there have been signs that we are at standing at the headwaters of a river – let’s hope it doesn’t trickle into the sands. The biggest political game on the block is undoubtedly Brexit – and we all know what…
Environment, Brexit and the media
You can listen to the one-sided discussion between the NFU and Owen Paterson on the Today programme this morning here (at 0650). We heard from the industry and from a known strong supporter of the agri-industry model. What was needed was a different perspective or some more pointed questions from John Humphrys. ‘Why should the…
Nature Directives are saved – but not for us…
It’s great that pressure from the EU population has meant that the Birds Directive and Habitats Directive have been passed as fit for purpose. A staggering 520,000 people signed up across the EU to save these nature-saving pieces of legislation – more than have ever supported any similar EU petition in the past. I signed…
Defra’s year
I asked a bunch of NGOs what they thought were Defra’s greatest achievements of 2016; The GWCT, BASC, Butterfly Conservation and Plantlife were, apparently, stumped as they couldn’t come up with anything. I also asked Defra themselves and they said they’d get back to me – but they…
British values in Defra
Sajid Javid is considering introducing the need for public office-holders to swear an oath of allegiance to British values. This blog has come across a draft of a version which might be used in Defra, indeed, some say it has been in use for quite a while: I promise on my honour to do my…
And yet, we will miss Zac
And so we say farewell to Zac Goldsmith as an MP having been well and truly trounced by the electorate of Richmond Park (turning a majority of 23,000 into a loss of 1,900). Had I been a voter in Richmond Park I would have been torn between voting for the LibDems in order to…
The autumn statement?
A few predictions for phrases for the Chancellor’s autumn statement: it’s a bugger being in the Cabinet – I had no time to get Siberian Accentor unlike almost everyone else in the country. I bet that Ken Clarke has it on his list now. Only 32 European records up until 2015, and none…