WHAT an impressive interview Liz Truss gave to Peter McCormack last week. It lasted over an hour and was riveting; fearless and to the point.
You can watch it here.
Her main messages were:
- Britons blame the government for the frightening race towards totalitarianism.
- MPs are self-serving, weak and lack integrity, but since Blair, more and more power has been taken away from them and given to unelected officials, the Bank of England, the judiciary, the police, the Post Office, the water companies and organisations such as English Nature.
- If people want to regain control over their lives and get the state out of it, these bodies are going to have to go, but, she warned, it will take a fearless and strong government made up of fearless and strong MPs on a mission to achieve it and we are such a long way from this.
- She is not a ‘Trump for Britain’, because reform can come only from people demanding it, as happened in the US. Make America Great Again was a movement across the country and Trump and his team rose on the tide of it. We are miles away from it in England – people are apathetic, happy to moan at the hopelessness of MPs but too lazy to find out for themselves and do something, too fearful to switch off the BBC.
- Reform is growing and is a hope but (in her view) is not up to the job – yet. It has the same old reliance on ‘the Leader’ (rah rah) who is better than your leader. Reform needs thinking, active members, prepared to draft policy, express views and discuss points.
As a Reform member, here is how I differ both from Truss and, I fear, Reform UK policy. Do away with the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and the ‘green belt’ and allow fracking, Truss says. What? Er, no. If we are going to have a Make Britain Great (questionably Again) campaign, what are we going to get behind? A leader, a religion, the NHS, our humour, our values: they are all gone and worthless. For me there is still one thing. It is the countryside that makes Britain unique and sometimes beautiful, its settlements and fields built up over 10,000 years of people living and working here, the fields and hedgerows, lanes and tracks, providing mystery, interest and a soulful, inexpressible (unless you are a poet) connection to Britain. Each county has its own character that comes from the geology and nature mixed with the history of people wresting a living from it.
If we do away with it, what is left? A blur of modern development spilling out over the whole land, not an inch left to feel the past, the birds and animals that somehow continue to exist alongside us as they have for thousands of years.
The Town and Country Planning Act is not strong enough on the protection of countryside. It should be strengthened in that regard, but has managed to preserve something for us to all enjoy, our walks at the weekend or the end of the day. Even knowing the countryside is there is enough for some. I can only imagine that Truss and those in the Reform Party who agree with her about loosening planning laws (and all in Labour needless to say) are of that comparatively rare breed – people who don’t walk for pleasure or relaxation or hold in their hearts the love of the countryside.
We have to wrest our freedoms back, get rid of the heavy weight of bureaucracy, help people earn a living, get government out of our lives, but without build, build, build on our most precious resource, the land. The building lobby is waiting there in the wings, ready to bring out the same tired old economic and social arguments about green belt and countryside and how much better it would be as new (affordable, they say) homes. We should be able to see through their wily ways and keep our freedom and livelihoods without building on farms and wild land.
