Honour Bound To Resign?

Nothing has gotten me so riled up ever since starting this blog than the government's proposal to sell large swathes of English woodland to the highest bidder, even though it had already become clear that the funds the scheme would produce would not so much as approach the nearest reaches of the amount desired by the cutting-happy lords of the Treasury. So you can imagine my relief when news came last week that the entire plan was to be abandoned as the Prime Minister rose in the Commons to announce the salvation of those verdant cathedrals and those hidden, leafy mazes and those long-winding paths of gold and blue and green. No trees will now be cut to slighter size, but there is one who has now felt the axeman's sharp edge.

Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, has been thrown quite publicly, as the Americans put it, under the bus by her own political master. One Labour MP described Ms. Spelman's renunciation of the sell-off as a '"humiliating climb down," adding: "The Right Honourable Lady has been made to stand in the coroner [sic] with the dunce’s cap." Another Labour backbencher could but barely contain his obvious amusement at her fate: 'If there is any personal sympathy for the minister today, it's because she has been publicly humiliated by the Prime Minister.'

Indeed I do feel sympathy for Ms. Spelman. No one deserves to be treated in such a disrespectful - and frankly dishonourable - manner by the Prime Minister in whose Cabinet she serves. But it seems that she must - at the very least in part - share the blame for the debacle it so rightly turned into. The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) was the first to settle its budget with the Treasury back in the autumn, but it now appears the settement can be re-opened by the Treasury should the holders of the pursestrings feel it is necessary. So not only was Ms. Spelman called to defend a policy that was so unpopular that David Cameron let her hold high the banner for it, only to cut her down when push came to shove, her reward for doing it, the promise she could limit the cuts her department had to make, was wholly hollow and made too rashly months ago.

If Ms. Spelman had any sense of personal honour, she should resign as Environment Secretary. Having been sacrificed on the bloody altar of popular opinion, the trustworthiness of her words has withered to nothing. Whenever she now speaks out on anything, all we will hear is Mr. Cameron whispering to her the exact words she is to say. No politican, whose bond with her electors is based solely on trust, can be seen as a mere cypher for her master. Honour is in turn the basis for that trust and now she has lost her's, Ms. Spelman should give serious consideration to resigning her post. Such a dramatic act would show to the voter that she stands for something. If she then goes on to support the Government vigorously from the backbenches her voice will be that much greater when she inevitably returns to the Cabinet again in the future.

More on the Forest Sale

In only the second post I wrote on this blog back in October I commented on the British Government's proposal to sell large tracts of English woodland to the highest bidder. I saw little redeeming features in the entire scheme, as the sole objective I could identify was the need to raise money to cut down the ever-increasing deficit. But making money is never an objective worth pursuing in itself. Without any goal except the need to sell and sell what Harold Macmillan - that great hero of the small-c conservative - the 'family silver', the entire plan is daft. When Mr. Macmillan criticised Margaret Thatcher for her obsession with privatisation he was thinking of the railways and the utility companies. Just imagine what he would have made of this selling of the nation's natural heritage. To give the full quote:

"The sale of assets is common with individuals and states when they run into financial difficulties. First, all the Georgian silver goes, and then all that nice furniture that used to be in the salon. Then the Canalettos go."

And the Canalettos are going indeed. The first Eton-educated Prime Minister since 'Supermac' is behaving in the most unconservative fashion.

Having said all this, I read in the Guardian this morning that the scheme gets worse and worse by strides. Previously I assumed that the objective of the sell-off was to raise money. Not so it seems. This government is turning out to be so incompetent that even simple value-based arithmatic is beyond them. A government report "shows that government can expect the disposal of the land to cost £679m over 20 years but the benefits will only be £655m."

Selling off the woodlands of Britain had no practical benificial purpose but money and now even that is no longer a valid argument. No one stands to gain from this sale, not the public, who will inevitably lose some of the rights they enjoy now to marvel at the indescribable wonders and pleasures of nature, not the government, who will lose acreage and money to boot, and not the companies and charities who are to buy the land, as the report shows that private ownership and usage is economically unviable. Still the government is pressing forward on the matter.

Perhaps, then, I was too hasty before. It is not the (if only remotely) understandable motive of monetary gain that is driving the sale, but the ideologically blinkered concept that privitisation is always good and public ownership is always bad. I'll leave it to you, reader, to decide whether this is true, but I hope you can infer my opinion on the matter from my two posts on the great forest sale.

The Government can’t see the wood for the trees

As part of the overall deficit-cutting package announced a few weeks ago by George Osborne, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) will seek to sell of gigantic tracts of forests and woodlands all over the UK. All just earn a quick quid.

From Friday’s Guardian:

"The environment secretary Caroline Spelman is expected to soon spell out plans to raise as much as £5bn from the sale. … If confirmed, it would amount to the largest change of land ownership since the second world war and could, some claim, see previously protected woodlands make way for golf courses, housing developments and a wave of new Center Parcs-style resorts."

Now I understand that the deficit needs to be cut, and in general I am fully in support of lower government spending, but here the Government seems to be going a bit off script. Cost cutting and selling off assets should never be done for their own sake. Every measure should have an objective besides simply saving money. In this case, however, there seems to be no rationalisation except the necessity of slashing the DEFRA budget. Except that is, if more golf courses, Center Parcs resorts and expensive mansions are cause enough to get rid of one’s woodlands. Of course, they aren’t cause enough. Britain has enough of those already. Why should a nation highest aspiration be to have the most acres of golf links per capita of any country of the face of God’s green Earth?

It would be one thing if the only forests being lined up for auction would be those hideous commercial monoculture pine-nurseries, but it gets worse: the full, foolish extent of the mistakes being planned is described in last Saturday’s Telegraph:

"Legislation which currently governs the treatment of "ancient forests" such as the Forest of Dean and Sherwood Forest is likely to be changed giving private firms the right to cut down trees.

Laws governing Britain's forests were included in the Magna Carta of 1215, and some date back even earlier."

Yes, forests that have been domains owned by the Government in all its many guises for nearly 800 years are now in danger of the logger’s axe. These woodlands, the last of those primeval forests where once Kings hunted the furtive stag and rich-robbing outlaws could live unencumbered by civilised law, are the scattered remnants of a Britain that is passed forever into memory. They are as potent reminders of the glories of the past as the Cathedrals and Manors of men and intrinsically bound to the history of the British Isles.

But before I get overly sentimental – as the romantic in me is perhaps too wont to do – this proposal is a perfect example of why calling the Coalition Government conservative is looking increasingly untenable. A true conservative-minded government would never seek to sell things that have been very well managed by the public sector for centuries without proper review and discussion. In the case of the ancient woodlands of Britain, even a moderate conservative can see that maintaining these forests is something that can only be done by the government. A private company looking and needing to make money of it will interfere in such a way as to destroy the essentially natural character of an ancient wood.

Finally, it ought to be a priority for an administration that wants to promote such a vague concept as the ‘Big Society’ to give people – especially children – the opportunity to experience the joys of a British wilderness. There they might realise that Britain is more than the grey, concrete tower blocks of the modern British city. There they might feel a deeper connection with their country and all its beauty than they will ever feel through government-sponsored society-enhancing programs. A ‘Big Society’ can never come into being without such an instinctive shared connection.

The selling of forests for a few billions would be a mistake. Some cuts are good, but this is not one of those. If the Coalition really goes through with this plan they should also realise that once ancient woodlands are gone they will never come back. And that would be a great sadness. To quote from Keats’ Robin Hood:

             "Gone, the merry morris din;
            Gone, the song of Gamelyn;
            Gone, the tough-belted outlaw
            Idling in the "grenè shawe;"
            All are gone away and past!
            And if Robin should be cast
            Sudden from his turfed grave,
            And if Marian should have
            Once again her forest days,
            She would weep, and he would craze:
            He would swear, for all his oaks,
            Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes,
            Have rotted on the briny seas;
            She would weep that her wild bees
            Sang not to her--strange! that honey
            Can't be got without hard money!"