Bayeux Tapestry

As seen in the Daily Telegraph I awake with a start and a splitting headache. Where am I? Slowly, the moving shapes take on settled form. I am sprawled on the floor of a double room in a Birmingham Travelodge. The lights are on, the curtain is drawn. There is the smell of Smirnoff Ice and stale poppers in the air. I try to rise, but when I put weight on my hand I wince with pain. Holding my palm up in front of me, I see it’s streaked with gore. Stumbling to my feet, I trip over the sleeping shadow minister for ‘UK Security’. Someone – or something – shifts in the bed. ‘Kemi… dome…’ it moans. I stagger to the bathroom just in time to retch.

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.

Does Britain understand where Javier Milei’s move on the Falklands is heading? It is becoming clearer that, behind the nationalist bluster, he sees a real energy opportunity, and, from Argentina’s point of view, a threat. Milei argues that if drilling proceeded, as the Falklanders want, Britain would be able to seize offshore Argentine oil resources. This allows him to present the issue as one of national security on which his country needs to act. The British government line is low-key: the matter ‘is decided by the Falkland Islands people’ and the government ‘is absolutely supportive of the decision’. But is it aware of the degree of its responsibility?