William Croft Speech at the Countryside Alliance

[Will Frost]

William Croft heads to the London headquarters of the Countryside Alliance to speak to the organization's membership about his views on conservation and the work he believes the Conservatives must do to better advocate for rural communities throughout Britain.

Good morning ladies and gentlemen,

It is truly a privilege to be here this evening at the Countryside Alliance, an organization that is on the forefront of the fight to conserve our countryside and to advance the issues that matter most to rural Britain. I thank you for inviting me to speak tonight, and to share some of my thoughts about how the Conservative Party can do even more to support your work and to have the backs of the 100,000 people who proudly call themselves members of this fantastic movement.

This evening, the focus of my remarks will be on what we as a country should be doing to preserve Britain's natural beauty and to ensure we leave a better planet for our children and grandchildren. Now for some it may seem odd to hear a Conservative talk about these issues, but I personally believe that it should be Conservative politicians leading the fight for greater conservation and proper stewardship of our environment. For it was, as some of you may remember, Ted Heath who was responsible for creating the Department of the Environment. And it was Margaret Thatcher who as Prime Minister declared that, "it is we Conservatives who are not merely friends of the Earth – we are its guardians and trustees for generations to come." Mrs. Thatcher was right: it has traditionally been the Conservatives who are deeply concerned with the wellbeing of our planet, and the Conservative belief in personal responsibility that naturally translates into a passion for conserving Britain's natural beauty for future generations.

Now I will be the first to admit that over past the decade, our party has begun to lose its reputation as a political movement keenly concerned with the protection of our environment and the advocacy of rural issues. I, respectfully, believe that needs to change. For our country is only as great as our air is clean, our water is clear, and our land responsibly conserved. That is why I am such a supporter of organizations like yours, because groups like the Countryside Alliance are forcing all of us in Parliament to confront the issues of rural Britain and get serious about protecting the planet we all rely upon for every aspect of our daily life. There are a few key areas I believe our party must rededicate our focus to, areas of policy that are strongly consistent with our party's core values.

First, I believe the Conservative Party must aggressively advocate for policies that protect our environment and conserve Britain's natural beauty. Our party should be proud to pick up the mantle of conservation and responsible stewardship of our planet, but we can't seriously make the claim that we are serious about the environment unless we have the policies to back it up. In fact, we stand a lot to learn from the Countryside Alliance, and in my opinion we should stand with your organization in calling for Parliament to preserve far more green spaces and promote new wildlife corridors. We should put financial resources into re-wilding more areas across the country, encouraging developers to use land in a more environmentally conscious way, and reintroduce animal populations that were previously native to Britain. And critically, we as a party should make a serious commitment to totally reevaluating our policy position on climate change and green energy in order to massively reduce the amount of harmful chemicals, pollutants, and green house gases that we as country emit. Climate change is a national challenge, it presents grave and irreversible threats to rural communities across Britain, and the Conservative Party should be willing and eager to lead the fight to combat it. That, I believe, is one of our greatest duties as a political party.

Second, I think our party should be much more receptive to the concerns of the farming community, developing policy proposals that will allow British farmers to continue to succeed in the 21st century. Farmers deal with some of the most complicated and onerous regulations in the country, a reality that has become all the more true with the onslaught of regulations being handed down by the European Union through the Common Agricultural Policy. I believe the Conservative Party should continue the work of our leader, William Hague, in boldly calling on the Government to make major reforms to CAP and to win back powers over farming regulations from Brussels. The subsidies provided by CAP, while helpful to some farmers, are overwhelmingly concentrated in the hands of the biggest farms and have therefor negatively impacted small and rural farms. The farmers represented by the Countryside Alliance, some of who have joined us this evening, represent the many small businesses scattered across rural Britain that feel the weight and brunt of CAP regulations far more acutely than larger farms that have the manpower and resources to adapt more easily. We as a party should be in the business of reducing regulations faced by farmers, and should be committed to winning a statuary guarantee that new CAP regulations cannot go into effect without British farmers first having the chance to consult on the process. And, critically, we should stand with British farmers leading the fight for transparent and accurate food labeling, by demanding that the Government introduce legislation that requires all EU food sellers to accurately label the items they sell. Knowledge is power, and British mothers and fathers deserve to know what is in the food they are giving to their children.

I have a feeling that some of you will be able to guess what I am going to say next. Finally, the Conservatives should be unapologetic in our support of longstanding traditions important to rural communities, and that absolutely includes hunting. The Government's legislation banning hunting with dogs is a direct affront to rural communities across Britain, and serves no meaningful benefit other than to place even greater restrictions on the individual liberties of the British people. Just today, the Secretary of State for Health, Amelia Lockhart, highlighted her party's complete ignorance on the realities of rural Britain when she argued in Parliament that rural communities would be better off if they rejected hunting and embraced a more, "modern view." I found myself wondering as I listened to her speech, who is Mrs. Lockhart to tell people living in rural communities what views they should hold? What authority does she or the Government have to condescend to rural Britain about how their values are not "modern," or that they are outdated? Rural Britain does not need Westminster telling them what to do, they need Westminster to get out of the way! By the Government's own data, this legislation threatens thousands of jobs. It stands to devastate rural communities, to deprive them of an age old tradition that many proudly participate in, and to set a precedent that Parliament has the power to impose it's own views on morality upon individual Britons. It's not just harmful to rural communities, it is fundamentally in contrast to the British way of life.

To conclude, ladies and gentlemen, I just want to thank the Countryside Alliance for inviting me to speak this evening. I find the more often I get out of Westminster the better I tend to feel, so I can understand why many of you try to spend as much time as possible being as far away from this place as you can. But I appreciate you for being here, for keeping the pressure on all of us politicians, and for demanding that we take seriously the issues that matter most to your constituency. I can't speak for the other parties, but I can say with confidence that us Conservatives are committed to leading the conservation effort in this country. We are determined to work with organizations like yours, and with business owners and entrepreneurs around Britain, to develop effective and innovative solutions to combat the scourge that is climate change. All of us have a vested interest in the health and wellbeing of our natural environment, if not only because we have a mutual desire in passing off a better world to our children and to their children. We have an obligation to protect our country and our planet for them, and together we have the power to just that.

Thank you very much, and have a wonderful evening.

[Barclay A.A. Stanley]

Alright. Not a bad speech by William Croft, who has made himself the Conservative Party's spokesman on all matters rural, despite his representing a thoroughly suburban constituency and serving as Education and Employment shadow. Even so, his full-throated, albeit sometimes confused and muddled, defense of so-called country pursuits is well received by that particular segment of the population.

That brings us to this speech, where he addresses that very segment in the form of the CA. This speech is a mess. Let's be honest. It is a brain dump of about a dozen disparate policy ideas, three different topics, and none of them are really tied together other than the fact that they are all (more or less) rural issues. But that works for the Countryside Alliance in a way that it would not for, say, the Von Mises Society for this simple fact: the CA is a populist, groundroots type of organization, not a policy wonk think tank. The people in the seat at this speech just desperately want to hear the speaker say all the things that they are worried about, all of the things they think are right, and all of the key buzzwords and phrases that work for them.

Croft gives his audience what they're looking for in a way that comes off to neutral observers, or policy people, as incredibly annoying. But Croft gives them what they want and receives generous applause. He doesn't necessarily win anyone over with his speech, but he does something arguably more important: he reassures the Tory base that he is on their side.

No XP for this particular speech, but Croft has done some good work and established himself as a leader in this area. He has rural Britons thinking of him as a leader, despite his decidedly non-rural resume, which is possibly more important.