Labour is credible again but needs to do a lot more

It was an important week for the Conservative party last week as the diligent and hardworking Prime Minister continues to deal with difficult challenges. A brutal war continues in the Ukraine, the economy still showing stubborn inflation rates, negligible growth and high debt levels, the NHS backlog is still problematic, a crisis in policing, the asylum system chaotic, courts overwhelmed and prisons full. Given all this, why an important week you might well ask?

Rishi Sunak faces up to problems and calmly and patiently with his colleagues works to find solutions; stabilising the public finances following Liz Truss’ disastrous short premiership, re-gaining the confidence of markets, delivering a budget last month which addressed the biggest challenges for the economy and then last week a solution to the Northern Ireland protocol and repairing relations with European friends and neighbours.

This has been despite the destabilising effect and deliberate sabotage by the far right in the party including Boris Johnson, who has no affiliation to any group or any policy but himself; jumping on bandwagons if he feels it will be advantageous.

Last week we saw Rishi Sunak see off both the far right and Boris, with only 22 voting against his solution for Northern Ireland and the far right is now marginalised just as the Corbynites were in the Labour Party.

Boris is also a spent force and even his handful of diehard supporters admit that it is hard to see any possible recovery in the court of public opinion.

Jeremy Corbyn was rejected by the electorate and after boosting Boris’ majority as a protest vote against Corbyn, the electorate has moved on.

Fed up with the nonsense of Johnson and Truss and their music hall act, the focus is now on the Prime Minister and whether he can sort things out.

Keir Starmer is getting worried as his lead diminishes, but he is still very much the man to beat and Rishi Sunak has a mountain to climb.

However, Starmer will have to come up with more as he increasingly comes under the spotlight and we see no big ideas; what is Keir Starmer for? What are his plans? What would he do different?

Just as Boris benefited hugely from the anti Corbyn stance of the electorate, Keir has turned around the Labour Party in record time from the depths of the worst defeat ever at the last election to a healthy lead in the polls.

Much of this success has been due to Conservative mismanagement, disasters and a party at war with itself.

Now he has to make that final step and it will be harder than the lead in the polls suggest.

The opinion polls seem to show that we have historic levels of undecided voters at present and they must be won over.

Starmer has made Labour credible again, but he needs to do more; a lot more.

He is no Tony Blair and he has a much weaker team than Blair had; I can see few big beasts and I don’t see a Svengali figure; a Mandelson or a Gove.

Keir has majored on the economy which is of course correct, but there are no miracles to be found there, properly reforming the police-force will take longer than his first term in office; he needs a radical plan which will return intellectual heft to his party and give us a vision of what he might do.

We have no agricultural policy from Keir, indeed little mention of productive farming even at the NFU Conference and I can tell you that farmers are always cautious of a labour government, although they have always fared rather better and at the moment it is hard to hear a farmer with a good word to say about the Conservatives; but the rural vote must be won over.

Current agriculture policy is a shambles and following Brexit we have empty shelves, huge cost increases on farm which are not covered by retailers, severe cuts in farm payments and the replacement scheme is late chaotic and offers little to most farmers.

I would suggest that both Rishi and Keir have a golden opportunity to sort out the food industry and the agricultural base in this country; recognise that food supply and food security are both important and under any measure, vital to our future prosperity as a country.

We need to balance the need for productive agriculture with the environment, with Net Zero, with immigration, with trade, and change the unique (or bizarre as Henry Dimbleby the government’s own food tsar calls them) retail contract arrangements which are driving farmers out of business and causing empty shelves in supermarkets.

They need to focus on obesity and the corporate drivers causing obesity, as sorting out the economy only to find the NHS takes evermore resource to cope with an obesity fuelled health crisis is not going to revolutionise things.

However, making it less profitable to produce and sell junk food, at the same time supporting and encouraging those producing healthy foods would; it is a huge task, but we need some big ideas and some big answers.

We are already working on this in agriculture as healthy and high welfare animals are more productive and need less time and fewer of them to deliver for the market; a smaller carbon footprint and in the case of ruminants less methane.

I was at a sustainability meeting with Arla, other dairy processors and leading farmers last week, as we came together as an industry to tackle the sustainability problem. We know what needs to be done, but it’s a big challenge.

To see Dairy processors working together led by Ash Amirahmadi Managing Director of Arla and Chair of Dairy UK, is unique and shows the scale and threat of this issue of sustainability.

How we treat the soil, how we grow our crops, look after and feed our animals are all important and vital parts of this environmental jig-saw.

We all have a part to play and once the raw materials leave the farm, transport, processing, packaging, haulage and management of supermarket supply and their needs are all in the calculation.

This is a farm to fork initiative and we can together with milk buyers, change activity on farm and the processing stage.

This is huge and time is short with all sorts of distractions such as price pressure, on farm costs, government signals and schemes which are not all helpful and the rhetoric of all the single issue groups and politicians.

We also have to deal with the call for higher welfare and that too must be delivered but balanced against the environmental pressures; often in conflict.

Finally we have the consumer who wants all this but reluctant to pay for it; of course at this precise moment times are tough and many are struggling, but it has been the same for years through good times and bad.

Government policy needs a radical change in this area; who will grasp the nettle and be the first to come up with a big plan?

Last week will be remembered as the moment Rishi Sunak took control, but victory at the next election will come to those who have a big plan and can show purpose.