I try not to get political but ...

As the title of this post says, I'm not a political animal and I hate to drag this blog into that mucky world. 

But, sometimes, you have to speak out. 

I'm prompted to do so today by the fact that three of the UK's most respected environmental agencies have been forced to comment on the government's apparent plans to declare a 'free-for-all' on our countryside.

It began last Thursday with Jacob Rees-Mogg’s announcement of a Bill to expunge all remaining EU-derived regulations from the UK statute book by the end of 2023. In one fell swoop, that will remove a vast array of carefully-crafted environmental protections: most notably the Habitats Regulations, which seek to preserve the country’s endangered species and remaining fragments of wild nature. 

Rees-Mogg also suggested that fracking should resume and hinted that his department could designate fracking sites as nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs), allowing them to bypass normal planning requirements. This is in direct conflict with the Tories' own election promises.

Then chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini budget announced a swathe of so-called ‘Investment Zones’ in which taxes will be cut, planning rules relaxed and environmental regulations ripped up. 

Then emerged rumours that Liz Truss’s new Ministers may even ditch the long-awaited environmental reforms to farm subsidies. Moving away from the EU’s retrograde Common Agricultural Policy was one of the few upsides to Brexit. Instead of paying landowners according to the sheer area of land they farmed – a vast subsidy to wealthy aristocrats and city bankers, with few strings attached – we could now redirect that £3bn in annual taxpayer subsidies to pay farmers for public goods, like restoring nature. But with Mark Spencer taking over the farming brief at DEFRA, all this is now in jeopardy. 

All of this caused the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) to issue this strong statement: 'Make no mistake, we are angry. This government has today launched an attack on nature'. 

Then, Craig Bennett, head of the Wildlife Trusts, called it 'utter madness'. 

And in an unusually strong statement, the National Trust wrote: 'Rather than ramp up action to support our environment, this Government appears however to be heading in the opposite direction. Environmental protections are dismissed as 'burdens'… The new Investment Zones represent a free-for-all for nature and heritage'. 

As Guy Shrubsole, a writer on environmental issues, comments:

'These groups represent a vast slice of the British public, dwarfing the memberships of every political party put together: the Wildlife Trusts have 870,000 members, the RSPB a million, whilst almost one in ten Brits are paid-up members of the National Trust. Politicians, however, have perhaps got used to seeing these organisations as large but gentle beasts, seldom moved to take political action. But with the RSPB now vowing 'a mass mobilisation of our members', that is about to change. [...] Truss’s disregard for any environmental limits to economic growth offends not just the millions of Brits who are bird watchers and botanists, ramblers and animal lovers – but also the way that the British, and particularly the English, conceive of themselves. A much wiser Conservative prime minister than Truss, Stanley Baldwin, wrote nearly a century ago: “England is the country, and the country is England“. By this, he meant that the quintessence of England is the countryside, the bucolic idyll: William Blake’s green and pleasant land.' 

If you are a member of these organisations and you value your countryside, let them know how you feel. And write to your your MP. 

This has to be stopped. 

NOW. 

Guy Shrubsole's blog on Substack (Original here).