Dangerous game for the Tories, and I don't think the Adam Smith Institute has done enough research into all the implications. Just looking at the food market isn't enough.OxygenJames said:
from the Adam Smith boys:"The Guardian treats us to a complaint about Brexit. That if we go to free trade then that will mean screwing the British farmer. Good, that’s what we want to do, screw the British farmer. That’s one of the points of having Brexit:
Entirely shafting the British farmer isn’t a problem with Brexit, it’s the point."
Some 30% of of our farmland is let to tenant farmers by the owners, who are investors. For example for miles around me in Surrey, most of the farmland is owned by Merton College, while vast tracts of other land is owned by the City of London Corporation.
The remaining 70% of owner occupier land includes many very large scale farmers in England who are actually businessmen just directing or merely overseeing operations.
The aristocracy and the Royal Family still play an important role in the ownership of our country. More than a third of land is still in the hands of aristocrats and traditional landed gentry. Indeed, the 36,000 members of the Country Landowners Association own about 50% of the rural land in England and Wales.
Collapsing UK farming could have a devastating effect on land prices, hardly delighting all those Tory owners and investors.
.