WHEN Britain’s probable next prime minister finished his conference speech last month, Britain’s countryside must have given a shudder. Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer could hardly have been more explicit. He repeated the pledge of his shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, that development, rural included, needed ‘builders not blockers’. He wanted to ‘drive a bulldozer’ through planners’ offices. He wanted to defy the nimbys and shout: ‘Yes in my back yard.’
Only five weeks earlier, Sir Keir had written in COUNTRY LIFE that he ‘wanted everyone in the countryside to know’ that he was determined to ‘restore respect’. He meant to ‘shift power back into the hands of communities’, which, in the context, meant rural ones. Yet in his speech and
