Comment & Opinion

I was Jeremy Hunt’s main political adviser and helped put together multiple Autumn Statements and Budgets. This is what I think Rachel Reeves’s Budget means for the countryside

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Two years ago this week, I wasn’t sitting at home in West Sussex looking out over the local farm as I am now, I was in the Chancellor’s office at the Treasury, reflecting on his first month in office and starting preparations for his first Budget. Those days were spent pouring over tax policies and … Read more

‘I cannot bring myself to believe that Emily Brontë would be turning over in her grave at the idea of Jacob Elordi tightening breathless Barbie’s corset’: In defence of radical adaptations

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Wuthering Heights but make it Brat. This sentence would have made no sense even 18 months ago, yet here we are, in the year 2025, watching a trailer for an Emerald Fennell adaptation with an original score and soundtrack by Charli XCX. Anything can happen. Like anyone who is chronically online, halfway through watching Margot … Read more

Nothing is more important than trust, and our institutions would be wise not to undermine it

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When the world caved in for the BBC’s establishment, one of its longest-running, most understated programmes scored a prodigious hit. Countryfile out-Clarksoned Clarkson! The episode showed how British vegetable farmers are fighting back at the devastation caused by drought and flood. It was spot on. It showed exactly how difficult modern farming is and pulled … Read more

The Budget: What do we need to fix a broken countryside, and what will we get?

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Helen Browning,
CEO of the Soil Association (Image credit: Soil Association) As we head into the Budget, I recognise the Government’s challenge in balancing the books, but few investments deliver better long-term returns than food, farming and the health of our children. The British public cares deeply about the countryside, wildlife, farmers, the food on our … Read more

The Labour government of the 1970s saved our country houses. Will a Labour government of the 2020s save our country churches?

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Half a century ago, under the leadership of its dynamic new director Roy Strong, the V&A Museum held two exhibitions: ‘The Destruction of the Country House’ (1974) and ‘Change and Decay’ — the future of our churches (1977). Although it is safe to say that almost everything has changed for the better for the country … Read more