Boris Johnson faces rural fury over post-Brexit food strategy

Anger grows before West Country byelection as farmers say they will be left poorer and unable to compete with foreign producers

Boris Johnson's hopes of surviving as prime minister have been dealt a serious blow after farmers and environmentalists condemned his government's post-Brexit food strategy as a disaster for people in the countryside - with less than two weeks to go before a key rural byelection.

In an interview with the Observer, the president of the National Farmers Union, Minette Batters, said ambitious proposals to help farmers increase food production, first put forward last year by the government's food tsar, Henry Dimbleby, had been stripped to the bone" in a new policy document, and meant farmers would not be able to produce affordable food.