On a grass verge down a long, winding country lane, where the hilltop views stretch across much of mid-Devon, there is evidence of rural disquiet in the peaceful village of Washfield.

www.theguardian.com (Extract)

A slumped figure with blond straw hair, his tie askew and suit dishevelled, sits on the roadside next to a table with wine and cheese, and a sign saying “Time’s up Boris”.

“He won the people’s choice vote in the village scarecrow competition,” says David Elston, who lives opposite and is proud to have constructed the winning entry with his wife, Marion.

“The competition was part of our platinum jubilee celebrations,” adds Elston, a retired engineer who comes from a long-established local farming family.

While he sees the funny side, as he poses next to the winning scarecrow, Elston is clear that it also carries a message. He thoroughly disapproves of the real Boris Johnson both for the damage he believes the prime minister and Brexit have done to the rural economy and for his habit of partying in Downing Street during the pandemic.

David, who says he has voted Tory in the past, and Marion will decide which party to put their crosses by in the much bigger “people’s vote” – the Tiverton and Honiton byelection on 23 June – when they attend a hustings this coming Thursday. But it doesn’t seem likely to be the Conservatives.

“His big Brexit deal is a mess, really,” says David. “A lot of price rises have been caused by the increased bureaucracy. The cost of fertilisers and feed have shot up.”

Jonson’s “surprise” visit to the Royal Cornwall Show (and possibly Tiverton) was tightly controlled. Despite this he was caught on camera meeting the voters…..

Are any of Boris Johnson’s children working and looking for housing in Cornwall?

There are approximately 3.7 million households in the South East. There are approximately 277,000 households in Cornwall. If just 7.5% of households in the South East exercised their “right to a second home” they would create a demand equal to the current housing capacity of Cornwall.

Can Cornwall really build, build, build its way out of this on “brownfield sites” as BoJo seems to think?

[Cranbrook is built on Grade 1 agricultural land] – Owl

Evie Townend www.cornwalllive.com

Boris Johnson has said that Cornwall’s “trouble” is its growing popularity as more people chose to live and holiday in the county. The Prime Minister was interviewed about the housing crisis when he joined Prince Charles and Camilla with a surprise visit to the Royal Cornwall Show on its second day today (June 10).

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Johnson spoke about the “imaginative” measures that Cornwall Council are implementing to address the inadequate and insecure housing situations faced by many. However, he was interrupted by the interviewer when he said the “trouble” is that more and more people are wanting to reside and visit the county.

He said: “Of course the trouble is everyone wants to live in Cornwall, everyone wants their second homes in Cornwall.”

This was met with the interviewer commenting that people who live in Cornwall already were struggling to live in the county. She said: “Yes, but the people who live in Cornwall want to be able to live in Cornwall.”

In the interview, Mr Johnson spoke about the need for local people to be supported buying and owning properties by ensuring the tax system differentiates and supports them. He said: “Yes that’s exactly right. I’m sorry to say we’ve got to look at ways of differentiating and making sure that we use the tax system to support people growing up in Cornwall so that they have a right to buy and own here as well.”

He also spoke of the housing development schemes that are already under way in Cornwall, speaking of the council’s “balanced” approach in ensuring that brownfield sites are developed, rather than using further greenfield sites.

Boris said: “Cornwall Council has got some very imaginative schemes to help local people get the housing they need by supporting them – Conservative run-Cornwall Council. But what we’re also trying to do is make sure there’s a balance in the way we approach it.

“I’ve seen some fantastic developments here in Cornwall, on disused brownfield sites, real opportunities for developments without destroying green field sites. But what we have to do is make sure local that people have the chance to own that and to buy.”

Moving on to the topic of farming, he said that it was important for the farming community to be supported “in everyway possible” as the UK gets to grips with live outside the EU.

“What I want to see, in this time of uncertainty, is us producing more of the food that we eat certainly in our own country and eating more of the food we produce.”

John Wescott, a beef and sheep farmer from Bampton, near Tiverton, told the Observer that “most farmers would be voting against the Conservatives not because they wanted to for the long term, but because their policies were not doing anything to help them and were harming their businesses”.

Helena Horton www.theguardian.com 

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 combination of loss of income from subsidies and pressure to prioritise the environment over food production, when the country needed to become more self-sufficient in food.

A rural revolt on a large scale in the byelection would compound the prime minister’s problems over Partygate and the cost of living crisis, which are already hitting Tory support.

Commenting on the new government food strategy, leaked to the Guardian on Friday, Batters said she was “pleased to see a commitment on food security” but added that the original strategy had been “stripped to the bare bones” and that there was no plan left on how to implement its overall aims.

“We want to be eating more British and more local food but again I just ask how,” she said, adding: “It’s all very well to have words but it’s got to have really meaningful delivery and we aren’t seeing that yet in this document.”

Batters said she met Johnson on Friday and told him that farmers wanted to be supported to produce food, as well as help the environment. “I said that is what farmers in Tiverton want to see. Farmers want the detail.” She said that at present there was no clear policy.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said it would not comment on the strategy document until it is released on Monday.

Farmers have become increasingly disenchanted, having been promised that their previous EU subsidies would replaced in full after Brexit. Instead they are being gradually phased out, with basic payments being cut by 20% this year. In addition they say the scheme intended to pay them for adopting green policies such as planting new trees and hedges and building new ponds (known as rewilding) remains vague and confusing.

Jake Fiennes, a sustainable farmer and author of Land Healer: How Farming Can Save Britain’s Countryside, said: “It’s a rather weak 27-page document that says nothing. I see the farming sector disappointed, I see the environmental ambition down, I see a very shortsighted view. Food security and environmental resilience are the challenges of this generation and it is so depressing.”

John Wescott, a beef and sheep farmer from Bampton, near Tiverton, told the Observer that “most farmers would be voting against the Conservatives not because they wanted to for the long term, but because their policies were not doing anything to help them and were harming their businesses”.

Tim Farron, the former Lib Dem leader and now the party’s rural affairs spokesman, described the new strategy as “timid” and representing “no real change”.

Henry Dimbleby was commissioned by the government to produce a review which would tackle the obesity crisis as well as the affordability of healthy food. He was also asked to show how this could be done in an environmentally friendly way.

But his ambitious recommendations, including expanding free school meals, a 30% reduction in meat and dairy consumption and giving strong protection to British farmers by not undermining them in trade deals with other countries, have not been adopted.

His method was hailed by organic farmers as a blueprint to make Britain self-sufficient in food without compromising on the environment, and helping farmers to transition from intensive farming.