Boris Johnson faces rural fury over post-Brexit food strategy
Boris Johnson’s hopes of surviving as prime minister have been dealt a serious blow after farmers and environmentalists condemned his government’s post-Brexit food strategy as a disaster for people in the countryside – with less than two weeks to go before a key rural byelection.
In an interview with the Observer, the president of the National Farmers Union, Minette Batters, said ambitious proposals to help farmers increase food production, first put forward last year by the government’s food tsar, Henry Dimbleby, had been “stripped to the bone” in a new policy document, and meant farmers would not be able to produce affordable food.
Batters said she had told the PM on Friday that farmers – including those in the West Country seat of Tiverton and Honiton, where a crucial byelection will be held on 23 June – were furious with post-Brexit policies that they believed would make them poorer and leave them unable to compete with foreign producers.
The byelection, caused by the resignation of Tory MP Neil Parish for watching pornography on his phone in the Commons, is seen as critical to Boris Johnson’s chances of remaining in Downing Street, after he suffered a bruising revolt by 148 Tory MPs in a confidence vote last week.
The Liberal Democrats are trying to overturn a Tory majority of 24,239 in the seat in what would be one of the biggest byelection shocks of recent times. If the Conservatives were to lose the election to the Lib Dems, and Labour to retake Wakefield from them on the same day, many Tory MPs believe Johnson will be unable to survive as prime minister.
Last night farmers in the West Country seat said the agricultural community would be voting en masse against the Tories. This was because they were facing a
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