No-deal may spark militant tendency
Sometimes politicians must regret a catchy phrase used to sum up their intentions. And so it must have been for Prime Minister Boris Johnson with his exhortation that “Britain must leave the EU do or die by 31 October”, when he met up with the farming industry and discovered that for it the emphasis certainly seemed to lie on the “die” side of the equation.
On his first trip outside the London bubble, the message given to Johnson from the outlying districts could have left him in no doubt that those involved in farming felt a no-deal Brexit would be a one-way ticket to disaster for almost every part of the industry.
While the PM might have managed to give the industry a body-swerve when he came to Scotland a week ago, he certainly didn’t manage to escape unscathed when he made the mistake of paying a visit to some Welsh farmers the following day.
The promise from the Farmers Union of Wales that civil unrest and direct action would be taken to avoid the destruction of its sheep industry might not have been delivered to the PM in person, but the message that he was playing Russian roulette with the industry’s future managed to capture the headlines.
But with a growing feeling of panic as the prospect of leaving the EU without a deal moved from a possibility to a probability, it was crucial that the voice of the countryside was heard.
And I guess the industry did make quite a good fist of making its fears known. However, I couldn’t help wondering what sort of a response such an existential threat would have drawn from French farmers.
I’m pretty sure that roads would have been blocked
and streets showered with straw – and worse – while a few politicians would probably have found themselves heading down the Champs-elysees in a tumbrel for a meeting with Madame Guillotine.
But given the British reserve that seems to run through the farming industry, the threat of militancy from Welsh farmers might have come as a surprise.
Then again anyone old enough to remember Not the Nine O’clock News will probably remember its take on the “Come home to a real fire…” advert of the day which concluded with the line “…buy a cottage in Wales” – so I guess this militant streak in the rural areas is not new.
Our own NFU in Scotland had a board of directors meeting last week but officials were remaining tight-lipped over what had been discussed on this front. In fact the agri-hack pack had a good go at the union’s director of policy, Jonnie Hall, in an attempt to get him to spill the beans.
It is an interesting time for the union, which has in the past seen its top brass pay the price for being slow to bite the bullet of public demonstrations.
But if Johnson’s widely reported promise of a backdated convergence payment of £160 million is topped up with the £25 million promised earlier in his leadership campaign, funds coming to Scottish agriculture could be in for a boost. And while the review being conducted under Lord Bew of how the UK’S farm budget will be shared in future is due imminently, Westminster’s Scottish affairs committee last week recommended a “fair” formula which would see Scotland’s share of the UK’S future agricultural support budget rise threefold.
True, no one has any idea what that future budget will be – but, added together, there could be a substantial cash injection into the industry north of the Border.
However, one thing was made patently clear in our interrogation of Hall – and that was that, even if all these promises and possibilities bore fruit, the overall figure wouldn’t be a drop in the ocean compared with the financial devastation that a no-deal Brexit would wreak upon the industry.
But was any sort of demonstration on the cards?
Hall said that, if the industry found itself in an unacceptable position, it would need to muster as much clout as it could: “I’m not saying we’ll take to the streets – but I’m not saying we’ll not take to the streets,” was his diplomatic final word.