Dig a mile-long pit and bury a ministry the search is on for a scapecow
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Farms are dangerous places. 'Shakes' Morrison was his party's rising star when Neville Chamberlain, who was Prime Minister, sent for him: 'Morrison, I want you in the Cabinet.' Shakes (his initials were W.S.) looked suitably gratified. 'Yes,' said Chamberlain, 'I'm going to make you Minister of Agriculture.' Good God — I mean, thank you very much, sir.' It was, as they both knew, the humane killer. So it is again. Shakes's current successor, the hapless Nick Brown, must have seen his career buried in a mile-long pit in Cumberland, and we shall next see if it is deep enough to accommodate his ministry as well. The briefers are out against the poor old Min of Ag, or Maff, as it now likes to call itself, recalling its responsibilities for fisheries and food. Not the sharpest knives in the Whitehall drawer, we are told. A complete ministry, looking after one small industry, which is a subsidised disaster area. It makes nobody happy, not even the farmers. Once the election is over, Maff can be put down, and its work tidied away into Health or the Environment or somewhere. Foot-and-mouth disease needs a scapecow. It has upset all Tony Blair's plans, forced him to improvise, belied his assurances that all was well, left the countryside opening and shutting like a concertina and (as I found in New York) made the Americans feel sorry for us. At first he tried blaming the supermarkets, but the bolt misfired. Now he is photographed on farms, in yellow overalls, looking concerned and taking personal charge. So what is the ministry for? For absorbing the blame, and then for the pit or the pyre.
Slash and burn
SCAPECOWS have their limits, in Whitehall as elsewhere, as Mr Blair may have the chance to discover. Soon enough some new political horror will break out on what used to be Man patch, and he might then ask himself the right question: what is wrong, not with the ministry, but with the industry? What makes farming different? Answer: it is the command economy's last stronghold. It lives under an economic regime of its own, a sustained attempt to regulate, direct and protect it and to repress competition and choice. This regime, for example, forbids farmers in a country where the soil and climate are ideal for dairy farming to meet the national
demand for dairy produce. 'There can hardly be any other system,' said Lord Kingsdown when he doubled as Governor of the Bank of England and President of the Royal Agricultural Society, 'which so comprehensively undermines the European Union's credentials as an open and free market.' Yes, here it still is, the Common Agricultural Policy, Europe's most expensive and most pervasive economic institution, a monument to inefficiency, waste and corruption, a surcharge on every citizen — and the rulebook, as must now be obvious, of a depressed industry. Dig this regime up, slash it, burn it, bury it.
Not from benevolence
YOU may wonder how farmers would sell us their produce without it. Adam Smith had the answer: 'It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.' This works in other industries, too. We do not rely on the benevolence of the manufacturers of ballpoint pens, nor do they rely on the benevolence of governments, armed with subsidies and grants. There are no quotas for ballpoints and no intervention prices. There is not even a green ballpoint pound. There must be a ballpoint mountain somewhere, for where else do they all go? Even so, we are not asked to finance it, or to applaud when surplus ballpoints are passed off to the third world. No producers of ballpoints are paid money not to produce them. They somehow stumble along without a set-aside scheme — and, for that matter, without a ministry, either. Where is the Secretary of State for Stationery, and his minister of state and parliamentary secretaries and full supporting cast? This benighted industry seems to think that it can get along by making ballpoint pens and selling them to people who want to buy them. Adam Smith would have backed it.
Absurd prescriptions
SOME smarty might then have asked the old sage how market economics can cure foot-and-mouth disease. To this he might reply that the present prescription means killing the patients, and thousands of healthy creatures as well, so that his version could hardly be worse. If enough people want something better, it will be worth someone's while to devise a cure and sell it. Adam Smith was a great believer in man's urge to better his lot — a force often powerful enough, he said, to overcome the extravagance of government and the greatest errors of administration: 'Like the unknown principle of animal life, it frequently restores health and vigour to the constitution, in spite, not only of the disease, but of the absurd prescriptions of the doctor.'
Buttoning down
EVERYTHING must go at Marks & Spencer, including Baker Street and Brooks Brothers. Luc Vandevelde is taking my advice and quitting that great Kremlin of a corporate head office. I urged him to move to the North Circular Road, but I suppose that Paddington Basin will do. Brooks is best known for the button-down shirts which its civil and well-informed staff sell to Wall Street bankers and brokers. M&S paid too much for it for no good reason, but left it alone. It has suffered as the urge to dress down has forced its customers to go to work in beach shirts and chino pants, but this was a fad of the bull market and may now be dying with it. My observers of financial fashion tell me that the market is battening down and the shirts are buttoning down again. Brooks will be back.
Sleep no more
GOOD night, Ovaltinies. Novartis is shutting your factory. You can see it from the railway at King's Langley, and the field opposite used to be dotted with hens, making their own oval contributions to your beauty sleep. Well, that was the message, anyhow. Now Ovaltine will come from Switzerland, and Novartis is cutting out another nursery favourite, extract of malt, as prescribed for Roo and eaten by Tigger. It's enough to drive you to Marmite.
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