Country Life

Anyone still doubting just how far the Labour Party has sunk need only consider that it has ceded to the Tories the ground on which the Greenbelt is defended. The Greenbelt is a thoroughly Socialist idea, conservative in the best sense as all such ideas are. It could not be further from the boorish “free” market, which would of course permit and encourage utterly unrestricted building on our green and pleasant fields, because it would permit and encourage utterly unrestricted everything.

For that matter, the continued existence of British agriculture is also a thoroughly Socialistic bucking of the market by the State in the admirably conservative causes of close-knit families, strong communities, environmental responsibility and animal welfare. Yet the present Government has given the farmers and their labourers almost as much reason to hate it as its predecessor gave them, and at least as much as its proposed peasant-despising, townie-toff successor would give them.

The creation of a new political movement must be the most pressing concern of, among so many others, everyone who loves our countryside, whether to live in or to visit; of everyone who recognises that sovereignty is eroded, as ruinously as by any other force, when a country is heavily dependent on imports in order to feed her people; and of everyone who believes in close-knit families, strong communities, environmental responsibility and animal welfare.