"Some people want to tell you the Conservatives have abandoned their green pledges, but nothing could be further from the truth," the climate minister, Greg Barker, told his party conference in Birmingham on Tuesday. He repeated the denial several times, protesting a little too much. The only spontaneous applause from the sparse audience during the energy and environment session on the main stage was in favour of killing badgers.

Owen Paterson, the new environment secretary, has been uncompromising on the imminent badger cull, aimed at curbing TB in cattle. He even laid claim to the policy as his own: "I started this policy in opposition." The person who introduced him went even further, giving his work on fisheries credit as the "intellectual underpinning" for Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's Fish Fight, though I'm not sure anyone has told Hugh.

Paterson exudes confidence and felt sufficiently at home at the NFU's reception on Monday night to deride opposition to the badger cull as "sad sentimentality." Moments before, a woman from Blue Badger - Conservatives against the cull - had been forcibly told by a farmer that she needed re-education.