As journalists filed into the press centre, I thought the minister sported a bit of a hang-dog look, no doubt waiting, wondering. As he remarked earlier, it was probably a good day to be out of London.
One of the journalists had omitted to switch his phone off and it rang in the middle of proceedings. “If that’s Number 10,” said Paice, “tell them I’m busy!”
We all laughed, but the mirth couldn’t disguise the tension on the face of Mr Paice. Not long after, the MP did get ‘that phone call’, to inform him that he had been sacked. There was little doubt he was devastated by the news.
Shortly after, there was another press briefing and NFU president Peter Kendall confirmed the news. There was genuine dismay among journalists and industry representatives alike. There can’t have been too many Defra ministers in the past 12 years or so of its history that were held in such high regard.
Kendall summed up the general feeling: “Jim knew the issues. He had been involved in farming all his life. He brought some credibility to the job, and he knew whether policies were practical or not and wanted to help farmers farm rather than be form-fillers.
“There was good tension within Defra with Jim Paice because he questioned some of the regulation.”
Recently, Paice had helped complete the tricky negotiations needed to secure a voluntary code of conduct for the dairy industry, news of which was announced during the show. It was an example of the MP “going the extra mile and working hard on behalf of the farming industry”.
With the possibility of farming set to be one of the UK’s economic success stories over the coming decade, many at the show felt that David Cameron had done farming no favours by depriving it of such an important ally.
Geoff Platt is a freelance editor & journalist, specialising in dairy.
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