Protectionism is definitely short-term thinking, but yes, you’re right that we need to stop the French from distorting the market. That should be what the EU is about.

In the long-term, the destruction of protectionism is a good thing. The closure of mines in England and Wales did Thatcher no end of harm but she was right and will be remembered forever for her brave and fair resolve.

My dad is a farmer, as are many relatives, they used to complain a lot about CAP some years ago, but now after BSE, foot-n-mouth etc and the general down turn in the business they feel they find it hard to imagine coping without it.

So I guess these European socialists got what that wanted..

Seriously how could Britain scrap the CAP subsidy system unless other EU countries did the same, because otherwise the market would be flooded by subsidies EU food and British farmer gets screwed, I know in the long term a free market open system should make British farmers better off as it did in New Zealand, but it would take a lot of time for things to adjust correctly.

Libertarians would say, they don’t care if the French are subsidising the cost of food production because ‘we’ benefit from that. But we have to respect our own people and industry, and the French wont be able to give high subsidies forever with the way their economy is going, so it would be taking a very short term view imo to let our own farmers go to ruin.
Look what happened with the energy supply, now we are gonna be held to ransom by the Russians, no ? , we don’t want that situation with food.

I’m not a protectionist, I just wanna see the Brits getting a fair chance.

About my own campaign, though, there is no campaign — I have won the seat because it was not contested by any other parties!