As damp squibs go the budget was a banger with no bang. The Chancellor, John Healey, did nothing to get UK debt under control; he did nothing to stop further growth of the welfare budget, which the Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) says is on course to absorb 11 per cent of government spending.

Every significant issue was kicked down the road to next year or beyond. The so-called breathing space against inflation was tiny and will be wiped out by the continuing financial woes the budget failed to tackle.

There was lots of talk from Healey about delivering social justice, but no justice for farmers around overturning the still bizarre decision on inheritance tax for family farms.

This budget was almost certainly the last chance, without a change of government, for that decision to be changed in favour of family farms and to the disadvantage of the super rich still using agricultural property relief.

Having been knocked back yet again over this entirely wrong decision, salt was then rubbed into wounds when Healey praised his predecessor, Rachel Reeves’, skills in the job. Cynics can only take this one way. If she was so good, why did the new prime minister dump her from the job. It may be true that the budget could have been worse in terms of tax rises, but the fact remains that the UK tax take is now at a new record level. And since the budget failed to solve any of the problems over which the government is in denial, worse is yet to come. If people follow government advice they will be living with a stockpile of tinned food, dried pasta and enough water to get them through a few weeks. By telling people not to panic or panic buy, the government has ramped up a feeling of vulnerability and helped underline its case for increased spending on defence and global cyber-security. This is not a road to genuine national food security. In an increasingly unstable world we have become more and more reliable on long supply chains and just in time ordering, rather than holding stocks. We know this is a risky strategy that is becoming more so as wars in Ukraine and particularly the Middle East make shipping less certain and a lot more costly. For many countries living with this precarious supply situation is an inevitable fact of life. They have no option, because they lack the climate or the resources needed to produce food to feed their populations. By contrast the UK is sitting with an incredible asset in its farming and food industries, but is choosing deliberately to skew policy against delivering food security. Elsewhere governments have taken this threat on board, not least in the EU. There, food security has become a priority. It is now a key part of a strategy to improve protection against the immediate threat from Russia, through Ukraine, and from the uncertain geopolitical future forced on us by a breakdown in the world order that has maintained stability. This has been smashed by Trump and Putin pursuing policies that defy logic and which daily add fuel to the fire. There might be a case for households having a buffer against temporary shortages of food, but what they really need is a long term plan to deliver food security.

The government has shown common sense around North Sea gas extraction. Now that same thinking must be applied to food. The UK took its farming innovation to the rest of the world in the late 1800s. Those skills still exist and could deliver security from long food supply chains, bring new life to rural communities and create jobs in food processing.

All it demands is a simple policy statement that for the countryside the priority will be food production and that benefits for nature will be a by-product of that thinking. It could then leave management of a vital national resource to those who have been successful custodians of the land for hundreds of years. That would go well beyond the present political spin of giving families “breathing space”. It would offer people a long term healthy, secure food supply and there is no greater economic growth strategy than adding maximum value to indigenous resources.

That is within the grasp of politicians, if only they would have the political nerve to ignore armchair environmentalists who are happy seeing food production exported.