The natural coalition of rural people which was forged 25 years ago, before the hunting ban, is forming once more. On Monday in Westminster, we gathered under the Countryside Alliance banner to hear David Blunkett, David Cameron and others set out the issues. Poor Andy Burnham had inadvertently stoked our feelings by joking feebly about how he hardly ever visits farms and considers Defra the least important government department (would it were so!). There are strong current individual issues – the proposed trail-hunting ban being the most egregious and the inheritance taxes for farms the most economically damaging – but the sheer number of government-inspired rural harms is astonishing. The Alliance counts 27 of them. The fact that encapsulates the government’s overall attitude is that the Cabinet Office list of ‘industries that matter most to our national security’ does not include food or farming; yet if we could not dig for victory, we would soon face defeat. Growth in every postcode, vows Mr Burnham. Roughly 25 per cent of British postcodes are rural and none is prospering. If he had known that, could he have made his promise?

The following enjoyable question was asked by the Earl of Kinnoul, convenor of the cross-benchers, in the House of Lords last week: ‘My Lords, No. 10 North is approximately 200 miles north of where we are. Perthshire, where I am from, is more than 200 miles further north than that. The north of Scotland is another more than 200 miles north of that. I wondered whether there........

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