Melissa Kite Melissa Kite

David Cameron has lost the countryside

Abandoned by trendy urban Tories, the shires are in revolt — and heading for UKIP

issue 02 November 2013

When hunt supporters visit the office of a Tory cabinet minister these days, they like to turn up armed and dangerous. And so it was when a delegation from the Countryside Alliance arrived for a private meeting with the Environment Secretary Owen Paterson a few weeks ago, wielding an alarming new poll of their membership.

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It’s spring and in this corner of rural Sussex, the bluetits are at the window, newborn lambs are bleating in their pens, and all the rabbits are dead. The burrows are still there, but the chewed grass, the little collections of brown pellets, the white bobtails scattering before your headlights at night, they are gone.

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