“The poor object to being governed badly. The rich object to being governed at all.” GK Chesterton

Two weeks in to a new government, and we’re starting to see the cut of their jib. Mission-led and delivery focussed, it’s frankly a blessed relief to be talking about the real work of governing again. By and large the shadow teams have taken up their ministerial roles, and hit the ground running, save for the couple of forced changes due to election results.

The size of the government’s majority does two important things. It has introduced a substantial cadre of talent - seasoned campaigners and fresh young energy - into parliament from which to draw into government. Second it should embolden government to press on with the policy plans that might otherwise have been politically contested. Some of these - like climate, justice, immigration, environment, health - had become locked into politically moribund culture wars. This government does not - yet at least - have to spend time trying to govern with an eye on dissent in its own backbenches.

The continuing party discipline is welcome, and it seems less about managing factionalism and more about keeping people’s eyes on the prize of the results that accrue from an ambitious, serious, reforming government, with a long term plan.

The growth of ministerial joint appointments is also welcome, baking in cross-departmental working with leadership accountability. I hope this will mitigate one of the longstanding features of the way we do government in Britain - departments defending their own interests in a competition for resources - and start to provide the impetus for collaborative problem solving and action.

We are starting to see, too, how the missions will be delivered. The Prime Minister’s tour of the devolved nations, and invitations to mayors to meet him in No 10 set the tone. Working together with respect, devolving power and resources, and engaging leaders in a national mission of renewal sets up a whole new tone in relationships. Secretaries of State followed suit, inviting stakeholders in to foster a sense of shared purpose to tackle some of the wicked issues in their in-trays.

Joined up government at every level, devolving real power and responsibilities to the places and institutions best placed to get results - all good. So what could this mean for the food, farming, environment and countryside portfolio, and its read across to climate, nature and health, to reducing inequalities and fostering a resilient and prosperous economy?

Truth be told, food systems have not had much airtime in government planning so far. Defra SoS Steve Reed has concentrated on the urgent problems of water pollution, river and coastal health. But return to this part of his portfolio he must, so central is it to government’s long term strategic plans.

Consider, for example, the goal to reduce the inequalities in life expectancy between wealthier and poorer areas. The King’s Fund tells us: Healthy life expectancy is more than eighteen years lower for the most deprived compared to the least deprived. Life expectancy is fundamentally connected to the social determinants of health - education, poverty, decent work, where we live and so on. It is also connected to the commercial determinants of ill-health. The financialisation of our everyday economy means that so many elements of a decent life are out of reach for poor communities. Affordable and decent housing; efficient public transport; health care; fair pay and contracts for work; access to green spaces; and yes - fresh, healthy food, sustainably produced, easily available for everyone, everywhere.

Diet related ill health is shortening lives, and making the years lived sicker and poorer. Chronic illnesses are reducing people’s ability to work in the way they want to, and shrinking the national workforce needed to strengthen the economy. Poor diets are making our children shorter, fatter and mentally unwell.

Yet action on food systems has proved notoriously hard to mobilise. Perhaps because there’s usually enough cheap food on supermarket shelves, governments have been persuaded, by the powerful lobbyists for big food businesses, that it’s not really a problem at all. Or those problems could be solved if “consumers just make better choices”. But when you open the doorway on the food system as a whole, and it’s relationships with health, with farming and land use, with the climate and nature crisis, with economic justice and inequalities, it is clear that food is at the heart of many serious challenges that governments can no longer ignore.

The bills in the Kings Speech tackling junk food advertising and highly caffeinated energy drinks are a start, and a testament to campaigners' focus. But they are only a start.

To tackle these problems we have to start seeing food as a system - a web of connected and interdependent features that must be understood and tackled as a whole, to get the outcomes we need, while not creating unintended or unforeseen consequences.

The brilliant thing is that citizens are really good at seeing systems. Living our everyday lives we navigate our way through policy silos without a thought. Except when we can’t. And then we quite rightly ask… Hold on. Why isn’t this working for us? This is what we’ve been talking about in #TheFoodConversation, the biggest national conversation about food ever held in the UK. In citizen assemblies and workshops people are exploring issues around food and its connections with health, climate, nature, farming, land use, power and justice.

What we hear, in every part of the UK and across every demographic, is that citizens are astonished when they understand more about how it works at the moment. They are angry when they find out that the so-called ‘broken’ food system is working very well for some in it - the global traders, the multinational processors, the big retailers increasing their profits. But it is not working at well for farmers and growers, for local food entrepreneurs, for communities, for schools and hospitals, for the environment. And it’s not working for families coping with illnesses caused by poor food and food insecurity.

Citizens want greener, healthier, fairer food and farming. And they expect government to step up and act. They are unimpressed with ‘nanny state’ arguments, noting quite rightly that this sounds like a feeble excuse for inaction. And they point out that the issues are so far reaching that we can’t, as one said, “consume our way out of a structural crisis”.

Making food systems change a priority is a big vote winner. In fact, government will not be able to deliver on its health, climate and nature, social prosperity and economic resilience goals without doing so.

The good news is that there are now thousands of citizens, farmers, green groups, business and community leaders willing and able to help.