by GARY JACKSON
on behalf of Liberal Democrats across the Blackmore Vale

IN articles last October in the New Blackmore Vale Dorset Conservative MPs did their best to reassure us that normal service had resumed. Rishi Sunak had just found the reins to this government’s Trusso-Johnsonomic unruly shopping trolley.

Six months or so later, it feels like normal service has indeed resumed, but it looks and sounds like the same clapped out, wheezing government we’ve endured for years. We’re just meant to be grateful that it’s more predictable.

Camilla Cavendish, who used to work for David Cameron, wrote for the FT last October that “historically, Conservatives have liked to think their role in politics is to clear up the mess of the public finances made by Labour. But the current mess is their own. Brexit is incontrovertibly leaving its mark on our wealth and wellbeing”.

The trade deals with Australia and New Zealand came into force last week. Farmer and former DEFRA minister George Eustice is still apologising for these terrible lop-sided and rushed deals.

Over my daily dose of Liberal Democratic muesli this morning, I heard ex-Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer on the radio talking up the benefits. He said it’s not for those who struck the deals to worry what happens next, it’s for market participants to work it out.

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If you’re a Dorset beef or lamb producer, you may be less breezy. You may wonder what your work on high welfare farming has meant all these years.

I’m for free markets, but the people who craft trade deals must ensure that the market is fair as well as free.

We need a food strategy for our country. One that improves our health and creates the market to make it work sustainably for everyone.

It’s funny that one of the positive things delivered in the last few years was Henry Dimbleby’s food strategy, but the government that commissioned it has shelved it.

It could have set out what we want from trade deals for farming and food before negotiating smart deals – not rushing to take what we could get in a panic.

Resuming normal business is also a reminder of a party too long in power.

The news may now be two weeks old, but I’m still hacked off that Simon Hoare’s complacency has surfaced in the form of motoring fines from 2019 while assuming that we don’t mind paying them off, four times.

We don’t just want normal service. We want better.

People in neighbouring Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole wanted better and backed Liberal Democrats in strength.

North Dorset’s opportunity will come at council elections next May, and a general election.

Liberal Democrats will make the case for tackling the right things in the right way. Join in to make a difference.