THE damage of Brexit, widely anticipated in Scotland where it was soundly rejected, is now unleashing an avalanche of bad news for farming, the heartbeat of our rural community.

In a heated Holyrood debate about this growing catastrophe, I had the chance to speak up for more than 180 East Lothian farms: arable, dairy, pigs, soft-fruits, vegetables and upland farms, employing thousands.

As with a lorry crash that tips a load of high-yield, high-quality produce over a motorway, it’s impossible to chase after each apple as other crops are crushed beneath the juggernauts. Thundering over East Lothian is the bad Brexit juggernaut, reducing meat and dairy exports by up to 59 per cent; a disastrous EU Settlement Scheme decimating our skilled agricultural workforce; and proposed Australia and New Zealand tariff-free deals that will prove ruinous to many Scottish farmers.

Tory claims about the ‘protections’ that will be negotiated after a deal is struck are fantasies. Individual Australian sheep stations are up to 30 times the size of the whole of East Lothian; family-run farms with farm shops serving local communities and sustainable food production cannot compete with millions of industrialised Australian farm acres.

National Farmers’ Union Scotland president Martin Kennedy warns starkly: Scotland’s beef, dairy, sheep and grain sectors are especially at risk and the deal threatens the future viability of the farming sector. Was the NFUS consulted about the impact on Scotland of tariff-free trade deals? Not at all, a pattern already set during the Brexit negotiations.

It is now being said openly that Boris Johnson’s plan for the Northern Ireland protocol to ‘get Brexit done’ was to try to renegotiate it later. That’s the government equivalent of crossing your fingers behind your back in the playground.

East Lothian needs safeguard clauses: prosperity in East Lothian’s rural areas cannot be sacrificed for a face-saving Tory deal. I’m not sitting back on this.