Both the environment secretary, Andrea Leadsom, and the farming minister, George Eustice, were members of the Fresh Start group, that seeks reform of the EU’s common agricultural policy. It has some good ideas and some frightening ones, including a policy that would lead to the most productive areas of the country being, in effect, designated free from wildlife, while environmental subsidies are concentrated in other places. Both Leadsom and Eustice haveendorsed this approach in public statements. Are the people of the lowlands (where almost all of us live) to be surrounded by nothing but agricultural desert, without trees, hedges, birds, mammals or insects? Are our children to encounter rich wildlife only on distant holidays — if at all?