PRIME MINISTER Theresa May’s bombshell announcement of a snap election in June has certainly thrown the cat amongst the pigeons.

We may even need to take wee Jeremy Corbyn seriously for a few weeks, as in the year of the underdog and strange election results I guess anything is possible.

In that regard I find it hard to believe that I have finally agreed with a policy announcement from Jeremy Corbyn and his sidekick John McDonald.

But in the midst of lambing and calving that is exactly what has happened. The Labour Party has suggested that, should it ever get into power, (as unlikely as that may be) it would introduce legislation to stop the closure of high street banks, especially in rural areas.

I am not a big fan of state interference in business decisions, but it is clear that the present epidemic of announcements of bank closures needs some intervention to make the people at the top of these organisations think again about the impact on their customers across the country.

In our area, following the closure by RBS of the Sanquhar branch three years ago, now it has decided to close Cumnock, amongst a whole load of others.

That means the nearest branches for us are 30 miles away in either Ayr or Dumfries. Of course, RBS will argue that lack of footfall makes these branches uneconomic as more people move towards digital banking.

They will also argue that mobile banks (no more than glorified ice cream vans) can fill the void left by the closure of a branch.

I am not sure the bank employees would necessarily see it this way however, never mind their long suffering customers!

Digital banking is all very well, but many of the transactions we make still need a bank and queueing outside an ice cream van in the pouring rain or driving snow waiting for a ‘99’ is not what anyone can reasonably describe as a banking service.

And, even if these transactions could be automated, there is another fundamental flaw in this RBS (as well other high street banks) strategy.

That is the quality of the internet connectivity that many of us, particularly in rural areas, have had to suffer for far too long.

Indeed, it was interesting recently when son Stuart visited Nepal that the mobile phone and internet connections were better in the foothills if the Himalayas than in the southern uplands of Scotland!! Having visited one of the biggest dairy farms in Nepal, with the grand total of eight cows, Nepalese agricultural development may be decades behind ours, but, bizarrely, their connectivity appears to be decades in front of us.

I suggested to RBS three years ago that the services of the local post office and bank could be combined in Sanquhar in one shared building to provide more cost-effective services to local people – and provide much needed local employment.

However, this was apparently much too complicated for anyone in RBS to get their heads round and the old RBS building in Sanquhar lies empty and dilapidated, while the post office is up for sale yet again. With many of Scotland’s community councils benefiting from the proceeds of renewable energy in their vicinity, why couldn’t some of this money be used in a three-way partnership between the community, banks and post offices to preserve services and jobs in these rural communities?

When you are sitting in Gogar or London, looking at spreadsheets and trying to figure out another way to take out cost from the bank following the latest revelation of compensation packages for another miss-sold financial product, or some other disastrous corporate strategy from 10 years ago, it’s far too easy to forget that banks survive because customers require their services.

Those same customers have funded these executives’ salaries since the bailouts of 2009. It seems totally bizarre to me that the banks' customers are the ones paying the price for the banks' own failures and the greed of senior executives, it would appear present as well as past.

And, for farming in particular, RBS has also announced a swathe of reductions in the number of agricultural managers. No doubt also in the name of cost cutting.

I find this decision even more bizarre because there has never been a time when these people have been more needed.

Cash flows have never been more unpredictable thanks to the incompetence of Scottish Government and its continuing inability to pay support payments on time, or even in keeping with any pre-announced schedule.

Budgeting is impossible and the announcement by Scottish Government before Easter of a so-called timetable for payments between now and the autumn, looks as about as likely to actually happen as Scotland having 10 players in the British and Irish Lions squad (Editor's note: We had two).

When you add the uncertainty created by Brexit to this, farm businesses are going to require as much advice and support as possible from professional advisers, including bankers, to help steer us through this turbulent period.

That’s where the input and professional guidance of relationship managers can be invaluable. But with less of them and more people needing their help, how will this work?

If the bank is not there for people (customers and employees) and it is not there for businesses, who is it there for?

So much for the bank calling itself the Royal Bank for Scotland, instead of the Royal Bank of Scotland in recent adverts!!!

And the final sting in the tail will, no doubt, be an increase in the margins it charges its customers for borrowing money. This is surely inevitable given the continued poor financial performance of the bank, and once again customers will pay for the failure of others.

In a post Brexit world, there is a lot of talk about doing things differently. And why not? Just as RBS should be refocussing on its customers and the communities it serves if it truly wants to win back its reputation in this country, why don’t we break out of past habits in agriculture too?

With export markets likely to get tougher and imports more expensive post Brexit, why not really ramp up local sourcing of food and make it the central theme of a post-Brexit agriculture strategy for Scotland, in fact for Britain?

We have talked about it for long enough, but without the rules and constraints of the EU, why don’t we just get on and do it?

Then if we can get the real value of our production from the market we wouldn’t need RBS or government to lend us money – now wouldn’t that be nice!!