GREAT Yorkshire Show organisers had long clung to the hope that the event could transcend the foot and mouth crisis.

Even when it became clear that no livestock would take part, the Yorkshire Agriculture Society believed the show must go on. The event would be symbolic of a better future: it would fly the flag for British agriculture.

Now that flag has reluctantly been packed away. Once the National Farmers' Union declared it was pulling out, it was clear the show was no longer sustainable.

The new cases of foot and mouth on farms in the Skipton area meant that this was not the time or place to celebrate British farming.

It is a bitter, bitter blow. Many agricultural shows had already succumbed to foot and mouth, but the Great Yorkshire is the most prestigious.

One of the biggest annual events in the north of England, the show attracts more than 120,000 people. It costs millions of pounds to stage. Some of that investment is inevitably lost.

The show's exhibitors have witnessed the shutters fall on their biggest shop window of the year. The tourist industry's last chance to revive the summer season has dropped off the calendar: the cancellation only reinforces the perception that Yorkshire is closed to visitors.

But the damage is more than financial. This year's Great Yorkshire Show had evolved into a defiant gesture of hope, a morale-boosting set-piece to prove the determination of the region's farmers to come through the crisis. Now the event has collapsed, and morale has collapsed with it.

Political leaders, insulated from the real world in their air-conditioned battle buses, have all but ignored the foot and mouth campaign. It is time for them to take a moral lead. They must commit the next Government, of whatever shade, to a substantial rescue package for Britain's troubled countryside.

Updated: 11:04 Friday, June 01, 2001