The flavour-packed classics here in Peckham are defiantly on the right track

Whole Beast at the Montpelier, 43 Choumert Road, London SE15 4AR (020 7635 9483). All dishes £3-£16, desserts £4-£6, wine from £25

Some menus read like the setlist for a Take That gig: a few ballads to kick things off, in the shape of cheery salads and dips, building towards some serious live fire grill, dancefloor fillers. Others are a bit more Elbow: a warm, comforting and life-affirming journey through the vagaries of love and loss; some French classics, say, or a few soothing pasta dishes followed by a perfectly made crème brûlée. Behold, the great Guy Garvey cracking through the lightly bitter carapace of life’s burnt sugar to get to the soft-set cream beneath. And then there’s the menu by Whole Beast, in permanent residency at the Montpelier, a boozer in Peckham. That’s a Slipknot gig. It’s packed full of cranial-shaking, jaw-rattling bangers from start to finish. I accept I’ve never been anywhere near a Slipknot gig. With this hair? And these feet? But the overwrought imagery stands. These are my analogies. If you don’t like them, I have others.

Brexit border checks are just the latest hurdle placed before British farmers. Labour must do more to back our food producers

Just before the election was called, news broke of Sue Gray’s so-called “shit list”: an inventory compiled by the Labour leader’s chief of staff of the immediate challenges an incoming Labour government would face. They include the potential collapse of Thames Water, prison overcrowding and chronic-acute issues with the NHS. One challenge was notable for its absence: the very real risk of empty supermarket shelves. The fact is British agriculture is in crisis. Its absence from the list is not entirely surprising. Historically, Labour has been an urban party. At the 2019 election it won just three of the 100 most rural seats. It has never quite grasped the importance or complexities of agriculture and the food supply chain.

That said, the Tories won 96 of those 100 seats, have many farmer MPs and have still made a bloody mess of it. The first challenge they will bequeath to Labour, should it win, involves untying the tangled knot around imports and exports. The confused introduction of hyper-bureaucratic and horrendously expensive border checks is the result of hardcore Brexit ideology. Boris Johnson could have negotiated alignment with the EU on food standards and animal welfare. Then we would simply be doing internal checks as before, and trade would flow freely.