Notice to quit
THE model for us to copy is New Zealand, which was such a good supplier to this coun- try until we joined the CAP and shut it out. In the end a market-minded government decided that New Zealand's only course was to dismantle its controls and subsidies and help the farmers to adapt to a free market. It took them about seven years but they made it. How long it would take Europe's farmers we are unlikely to find out. Too much political capital is invested in the CAP, too many undeserving beneficiaries, from bureaucrats to mafiosi, are making a good thing of it, and attempts to reform it end up by increasing its budget. The Com- mon Monetary Policy will replicate some of these effects, though on a larger scale. We are exempted from them, for the moment, and we would be well out of the CAP, too. Now is the time to give notice to quit — in the interests, of course, of Britain's farmers.
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