In one of the wettest countries in Europe, we could face summer water shortages because we have not built a single major reservoir in over 30 years. Here is the real kick in the teeth: we have paid all those prices for rules that have failed even on their own terms. We have created endless hoops to jump through and poured public money into bizarre mitigation schemes while Britain has become one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth. We have lost over half our ancient woodland and one in six species are at risk of extinction. We have got fewer birds, fewer butterflies and fewer mammals, and yet more paperwork than ever before.

We should ask this: if these rules are not helping people and they are not helping nature, who on earth are they for? We throw money at scattergun mitigation—fish discos and bat tunnels—while failing to invest in strategic, landscape-scale restoration that actually works. We force every project to fit every issue on site, even when that is more expensive, less effective and totally irrational. That means tens of thousands of individual site-by-site protections, which are bureaucratic, inconsistent and scientifically out of date, and all despite the fact that modern ecological science is clear that nature recovery depends on scale and connectivity, not isolated microprojects.