Forget the Rwanda bill. Forget the strikes. The real crisis brewing in Whitehall is a biblical plague of mice in rural Australia that has UK pest control experts reaching for the smelling salts.
The description from a farmer on the ground: a ‘decaying body’ of rodents. Sources tell me Defra officials have been on the phone to Canberra all week. They are terrified.
Not of the mice themselves, but of the political backlash if a similar infestation hits British fields. The PM’s office is quietly monitoring. But don’t expect a press conference.
This is a slow-burn panic. The National Farmers Union is already briefing that UK biosecurity is ‘not fit for purpose’. A Defra source muttered: ‘We are one bad harvest away from total chaos.
’ The mouse plague Down Under has claimed thousands of hectares. Grain stores are contaminated. Farmers are burning their own crops.
And the political fallout? The Australian PM is facing a rural revolt. Tory backbenchers are watching closely.
They see an opportunity. A chance to blame ‘net zero’ policies for weakening pest control. The usual suspects are sharpening their knives.
Meanwhile, the actual science is grim. Mouse populations explode when conditions are perfect: a wet summer followed by a mild winter. Sound familiar?
UK climate data suggests we are a few degrees away from our own rodent apocalypse. The British Pest Control Association has issued a ‘level orange’ alert. But no one in government wants to say the quiet part out loud.
Because if you admit the mice are coming, you have to admit the current system is broken. And in this game, nobody admits defeat until the bodies are literally piling up. I’m told the Minister for Farming is ‘taking personal charge’.
Which, in Whitehall-speak, means he’s trying to get ahead of the story before the Daily Mail runs a front page titled ‘Rataggedon’. Watch this space. The subtext is clear: the mice are the symptom.
The disease is a government too scared to act until it’s too late. Just like Brexit. Just like Covid.
Just like everything else.
