The NFU’s director of EU exit and international trade, Nick von Westenholtz, says there are not many Brexit regretters among farmers – yet.

Will he be voting Conservative again?

On Back British Farming Day, Starmer, but not Johnson, met NFU farmers. The great “ready-for-Brexit” sham paraded in Downing Street with all this “task and finish” talk may be designed to convince EU negotiators that Boris Johnson is deadly serious about no deal. The deal Boris Johnson struck with his withdrawal agreement, the signing of which he called “a fantastic moment”, and sold to voters at the election, is now repudiated. Their subsidies will soon join the budget scramble for very scarce spending funds: farm subsidy will not fare well competing with other causes such as the NHS. “But the reality is going to be different.” Why does he still back Brexit?

The closer that disaster approaches, the clearer the reasons why Brexit is a self-harming delirium. It’s not as if food is expensive here: only in Singapore and the US are food costs lower as a proportion of household income, says the NFU. The Times yesterday revealed that Cabinet Office plans include invoking the Civil Contingencies Act, with its almost unlimited emergency powers if Brexit threatens “serious damage”. “I lose sleep over that.” His global exports are growing as before, “but we’re 30% down from where we would have been in the EU”. But isn’t he escaping EU red tape? Financial services are creating new footholds in Amsterdam, Paris or Dublin, ready to take flight with their high-paying, tax-yielding jobs if there’s no deal: a tipping point that may leave London no longer a big player. Worse, prices are so unpredictable that suppliers such Tate & Lyle refuse to sign a fixed contract for sugar, so are free to cancel at any time. Road haulage is just one of hundreds of industries that would lose licences and professional certifications to operate in the EU. No longer. Donald Trump has listed “comprehensive market access for US agricultural goods in the UK” as a goal for any trade deal. How will the politics play out?

The spectacle of Conservatives – yes, Conservatives – dying in a ditch for the unfettered right to pick winners for state aid is a bizarre perversity. This lifelong moderate Conservative voter is now in “deep gloom”. Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist. Divining their political strategy is perplexing. Polly Toynbee Boris Johnson and Ukip’s Douglas Carswell on the campaign trail ahead of the Brexit referendum. How long can people stay in that alternative universe where dreams of sovereignty blot out what’s all around them? Farming used to be part of the core identity of the Conservative party. The damage is done already.

Ardent Brexiters will be undeterred by anything, but the government-induced mayhem of Johnson and Cummings’ permanent revolution is a vote destabiliser. But they are now backed by David Cameron, and four other former prime ministers. Here is one that contacted me. Just one example: I was talking to Bristol’s dynamic elected mayor, Marvin Rees, about council budgets and cuts, when he spread his hands out in a kind of despair at the governmental neglect. Each form has three pages, one needed for each of his 50 products with certificates of origin relating to ingredients from all over the world.

Add in free trade agreements not just with the US but Australia and elsewhere, and farming and the food industry will be massively undercut. Brexit is already affecting Baker’s business as, short of warehousing, he tries to get all the Christmas orders out of the country and raw materials in before 31 October. Behind him many of his MPs sported it too, as did Keir Starmer and Labour MPs: it was the symbol for Backing British Farming Day. Polly Toynbee By damaging the economy in the name of chasing red-wall Brexit voters, the Tories may lose others they take for granted ‘The motor industry warned on …

“You have to fill out a paper form in triplicate with carbon copies, nothing online.”. The religious down the centuries often inhabited dream-worlds of phantom heavens: Brexit voters can hibernate inside their own virtual reality – but not for ever. For an insight into the current chaos, what came back two weeks later from HMRC to the secretary of state was a pro-forma letter as if written to any member of the public: “Dear Mr Barclay, Please accept our apologies for the delay in acknowledging your case.

At the same time the government says it will cut all import tariffs on 88% of products. “Fantastic” and “incredible” are signature words in the prime minister’s surprisingly limited vocabulary. The Cabinet Office, sounding like a Ministry of Truth, will “ensure the public and business is not being alarmed by scare stories or falsehoods”. They were promised they could retain access to the EU single market and keep their farm support.” But they would lose that access and the government has only guaranteed them two more years of matching EU subsidy. How far do they think that will go when they say it should cover policing food riots, and compensating problems Brexit causes for business, transport or anything else?”. On Wednesday I talked to Robin Milton, a sheep farmer and Brexit voter, in his tractor, driving up and down to trim his 20 miles of hedges on Exmoor. That would wipe out hill farms in Cumbria, Scotland and Wales, and much other farming too. I am told it’s entirely impossible for 50,000 new customs officers to be hired and trained for still un-built port checkpoints with an un-built new IT system. The worst effects will grow over the years, while lorry queues and shelf shortages may last only a few months. She is a social democrat and was a candidate for the Social Democratic Party in the 1983 general election.

Calico Cottage is a family-owned firm in Haddenham, Cambridgeshire, making specialist chocolate and fudge in two factories employing 50 people. “The industry can never be ready,” says Wright. Look what damage Brexit has already done. We aim to send you a substantive response as soon as possible. Britain is battle-ready for no-deal Brexit, that’s the message. The government hopes Covid calamities mask the effect of a Brexit crash-out. Here’s what makes Calico Cottage’s story particularly alarming. In mid-June Barclay sent round an assistant who spent more than two hours trying to puzzle out just one set of forms.

Any delay in just-in-time deliveries across the channel will see his products axed from customers’ supply chains.

Luke Pollard, Labour’s shadow Defra secretary, himself from a farming family, says they listened, surprised to hear pleasing Labour ideas on increasing domestic food self-sufficiency, farm support post-Brexit, keeping high food standards and ensuring access to skilled farm workers: food and flower crops rotted this year for lack of them. But they are only one battalion of many traditional Tory voters who face bankruptcy and ruin if this government really does pursue a vandalising no-deal Brexit. Beyond economic damage, the greatest injury is and always was at the Irish border. Searching for what forms to fill, HMRC’s list of codes has been impossible for his complex products, where the quantity and original source of each ingredient needs a separate coding. Fear of resurgent Faragists weighs more heavily than his justice secretary’s threat of resignation, his chief legal civil servant walking out or seething Tory MPs, whose full strength we won’t know until final votes next week.

“I can see no upside,” he says. Yours sincerely …” HMRC is supposed to reply within a month, but the time is now very short – and how many thousands of other exporters are caught in this backlog? Johnson would herald striking a US free trade deal as a triumph, yet his government’s own estimates show it would raise UK GDP only by between 0.07% and 0.16%, and that’s over 15 years. But as the new cabinet secretary, Simon Case, pronounces that ministers breaking international law doesn’t breach the ministerial code, Johnson shows he has picked his ideal lackey. All rights reserved. Once commentators sought method in the Boris Johnson cabal’s politically perverse actions. If the Corbynistas don’t reappear then I’ll vote for him.” By chasing after red-wall Brexit voters, No 10’s antics may lose it many more votes it takes for granted. The company and each of his staff need security vetting to get exports through ports with less checking, requiring him to hire a security vetting consultant too.

Trading on World Trade Organisation rules means a 20% tariff will be slapped on to his exports, a price rise he’ll have to absorb: he sells to Disneyland Paris and says customers won’t pay the extra. Brexit always risked the Good Friday agreement, so a trade border down the Irish Sea was the only alternative: a bad one, but as the Financial Times revealed, Johnson was briefed fully on its consequences. There will be random shortages and unpredictable chaos. If this is your best model for Brexit try it yourself and then maybe even you and your Brexiters will think again.”, Calico Cottage already exports to Norway: if that’s the government’s best model for a future EU free-trade agreement, it’s no substitute for the single market. “It was for the ideology of it,” he said.

What’s more, the US will insist on abolishing exclusive “geographical indication” rights: Melton Mowbray pork pies or Cheddar cheese would lose their protected status, and could be made in Georgia.

Negotiations turned nuclear last week.

Mary Louisa "Polly" Toynbee (/ ˈtɔɪnbi /; born 27 December 1946) is a British journalist and writer. Real life will eventually crash in on Brexit fantasies, but when?

Brexit “has a psychological effect on their decisions”. Some things will be fine, but some will be much worse than we think – the unknown unknowns.” When it turns out that the Brexit secretary and his assistants are as clueless as anyone else, all this macho “preparedness” looks absurdly shallow. The assistant couldn’t fathom the absent information but promised that Barclay would write a letter to HMRC for the missing details. As Thomas Sampson, LSE associate professor of international trade, says, Covid-19 is a gigantic short-term shock, but Brexit does the long-term damage. Or similar warnings that unsalable sheep will be slaughtered when the door to 90% of the UK market slams shut on 1 November. Take Andrew Varga, managing director of Seetru, a Bristol manufacturer of industrial safety valves with £11m turnover that employs 130 highly skilled staff. ‘The Treasury seems to have spare time to include Sajid Javid’s bizarre intention to mint new 50p coin.’, Michael Gove at Warrenpoint Port, Northern Ireland: ‘In case anyone dares express a doubt that the nation is 100% ready, a rapid rebuttal unit was launched by Michael Gove.’. Meanwhile, the Treasury seems to have spare time from its preparations to include Sajid Javid’s bizarre intention to mint new 50p coins. No deal means that border must close: the EU single market can’t tolerate a flapping open back door. As he fielded PMQs on Wednesday, Boris Johnson wore a wool and wheat sheaf badge on his lapel. But here’s a reminder of what no deal and trading on WTO rules will do to farming and the much larger UK food industry: a 48% tariff will be slapped on British lamb exported to the EU, along with 57% on Cheddar, 37% on poultry and 84% on beef. This time though it appears that she has met her match.

“The paperwork is crazy,” he says.

Economically negligible, but politically red hot. On Thursday, Brexit edges dangerously closer to a no-deal precipice. Baker wrote a shirty letter to Barclay, “as a loyal Tory voter all my life”.

Her books include Dismembered: How the attack on the state harms us all, co-authored with David Walker. She has been a columnist for The Guardian newspaper since 1998. The motor industry warned on Monday that no deal would cause a £100bn “catastrophe”, as cars are hit with a 10% tariff and vans 22%.