Rishi Sunak faces the loss of country seats unless he heeds warnings about farm payments, and creaking public services
Farming groups say it leaves UK farms at a competitive disadvantage while posing a risk to the nation’s biosecurity, animal health and food safety. “An accident waiting to happen,” is how the pig industry put it, and vets have issued similar warnings.
Stuart Roberts, a former NFU vice president and ex-Tory councillor, joined the Lib Dems last year to underline the shift. “The historical stereotype is “farmers vote Tory”. The reality is that for some time, this particular version of the Conservative Party have just not understood the importance of food security,” he tells me.
Of the 150 seats it needs for a sustainable majority, 50 of them are in constituencies with more than 25 per cent of their populations living in rural communities. And a YouGov poll in just these seats found that Starmer’s party lead the Conservatives by 18 points. Labour is on 42 per cent compared to the Conservatives’ 24 per cent in these areas.
“They already feel like they’re being sold out and undercut, then you get the cost of living crisis, and on top of it all the Government come and change their basic subsidy payments. So that sense of betrayal is profound.”, poor ambulance wait times, a lack of police to combat anti-social behaviour, fly-tipping and farm equipment theft. Add in an acute shortage of affordable housing and it’s no surprise why voters in the countryside feel let down as much as those in towns and cities.
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