No tears for Spelman

Caroline Spelman was sacked from her top job at Defra in the Cabinet reshuffle. Even in many Tory eyes she was fortunate to survive the forest sell-off fiasco for so long.

All kinds of Defra policies showed Ms Spelman far keener on profits for farmers and shooting estates than promoting the "greenest government ever" that David Cameron and Nick Clegg once cynically promised.

Selling our forests, slashing national park funding, culling badgers, promoting mega-dairies, shooting buzzards, privatising our waterways and a dozen other policies confirmed that this ex-lobbyist for the massive conglomerates of the agri-business hadn't changed her true colours - and they certainly weren't green.

Sacked too is her second-in-command Jim Paice - the Tory farming minister who famously didn't know the price of milk.

But Richard Benyon, Minister for Wildlife and Biodiversity, has kept his position - which suggests the British countryside isn't going to be in safer hands under the new team.

Benyon is a multimillionaire farmer and landowner with a stately home and over 20,000 acres of land which has been in his family for almost three centuries.

Benyon has previous form for a number of environmental scandals.

He sold off large areas of ecologically important habitat including ancient woodland to be turned into a quarry.

He headed up the horrendous Defra project to capture and destroy buzzards in an attempt to reduce their impact on the number of pheasants reared by wealthy land owners for other posh chaps to shoot.

Benyon was also in charge of the privatisation of the British Waterways Board and its conversion into a charity-funded body - already under-financed and almost certainly incapable of guaranteeing the future of our canal system.

Traditional Tory values came to the fore in the manner of Ms Spelman's fall from grace.

All her male companions sacked in the reshuffle were given a knighthood.

Poor Spelman got nothing except a few Tory MPs suggesting she had to go because at 54 as a woman she was just too old for the job.

Labour MP Ben Bradshaw attacked the apparently strange decision to give honours to all the departing men, and none to the women.

"Cameron needs to explain why he's giving knighthoods to sacked male ministers while ignoring more senior women - another example of the Prime Minister's women problem," said the Exeter MP, himself a previous Defra minister.

So who are the new boys at Defra? Owen Paterson MP replaces Spelman as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Another millionaire, Paterson inherited his wealth in his family leather and tanning business. The tanning and leather industries have traditionally had an atrocious record on environmental pollution. Added to that Paterson is a leading climate change sceptic.

David Heath MP is the token Liberal Democrat as Minister of State at Defra. The Prime Minister needed to appease the Liberal Democrats by giving them a few crumbs and a junior minister at Defra obviously seemed as good a place as any.

Lord de Mauley comes in as Parliamentary Undersecretary of State.

Eton-educated Rupert Charles Ponsonby, Seventh Baron de Mauley is, exactly as his name and title suggests, a very rich Tory landowner with a farming background.

Not much in these few facts to give those of us who love the British countryside and its wildlife much confidence for its future.

More posh-boy farmers and shooters in fact - and the battle to keep our land green and pleasant will still need fighting.