Advance UK became a registered political party in December and claims to have gained more than 30,000 members since launching in early 2025. It positions itself as a burgeoning rival to Reform, setting out on its website how it differs from Nigel Farage’s party.
Leader Ben Habib has called for the UK to “onshore” all industries “from steel, to food, to energy”. Writing on X, he said: “A way to protect our producers is to impose tariffs on imports… Put first the UK, not producers in China and Germany”.
Setting aside whether-or-not this would actually be a good idea for the UK, I don’t think that the UK is going to onshore all food production unless it goes vegetarian or makes some other major concessions in desired diet.
Agriculture in the United Kingdom uses 70% of the country’s land area, employs 1% of its workforce (462,000 people) and contributes 0.5% of its gross value added (£13.7 billion). The UK currently produces about 54% of its domestic food consumption.[1]
If you’re producing 54% of your consumption using 70% of your land area, even disregarding what land area is actually suitable for agriculture and evicting all other users from the land, converting all land to agricultural use still probably isn’t going to get you to domestic production of 100% of domestic consumption.
Maybe you could grow more wheat and less strawberries or something, maximize the land allocation to crops that produce the highest caloric output. But the biggest gains are probably going to be ending consumption of meat, since that’s costly in terms of land.
Also do you want to live somewhere that has the pollution that manufacturing districts have abroad? I wonder what Brit is yearning for the mills? As we have seen with the Reform councils, these people are actually clueless about the reality on the ground.
If you’re producing 54% of your consumption using 70% of your land area, even disregarding what land area is actually suitable for agriculture and evicting all other users from the land, converting all land to agricultural use still probably isn’t going to get you to domestic production of 100% of domestic consumption.
If you evict everyone, then consumption falls to zero and you have a surplus = success, in their stupidly short-sighted terms.
Setting aside whether-or-not this would actually be a good idea for the UK, I don’t think that the UK is going to onshore all food production unless it goes vegetarian or makes some other major concessions in desired diet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_United_Kingdom
If you’re producing 54% of your consumption using 70% of your land area, even disregarding what land area is actually suitable for agriculture and evicting all other users from the land, converting all land to agricultural use still probably isn’t going to get you to domestic production of 100% of domestic consumption.
Maybe you could grow more wheat and less strawberries or something, maximize the land allocation to crops that produce the highest caloric output. But the biggest gains are probably going to be ending consumption of meat, since that’s costly in terms of land.
Also do you want to live somewhere that has the pollution that manufacturing districts have abroad? I wonder what Brit is yearning for the mills? As we have seen with the Reform councils, these people are actually clueless about the reality on the ground.
If you evict everyone, then consumption falls to zero and you have a surplus = success, in their stupidly short-sighted terms.