The National Trust is on a mission to Disney-fy Britain

The latest National Trust row highlights a depressing truth: the Trust is rapidly becoming a mammoth eco-warrior, rather than the preserver of historic houses and beautiful landscapes it is meant to be. It’s just paid £200,000 over the guide price to buy land at Thorneythwaite Farm, Borrowdale in the Lake District, without buying the old farmhouse that went with it. Bang go the chances of a sheep-farmer buying the land and the farmhouse. And now the 300 acres of land enter into the National Trust’s Disney-fied version of the countryside, where the eco-religion holds sway – at the expense of the farming practices that have carved out our exceptionally beautiful landscape.

Chief among the eco-warriors is the National Trust’s director-general, Dame Helen Ghosh. Earlier this month, she suggested farming subsidies should be changed to prioritise wildflowers, bees and butterflies, over food production. Her other great concern is climate change and the need to stop land falling into the sea, and to nurse the natural environment back to health.