 Thame, in Oxfordshire, makes an unlikely battleground. The small market town is a symphony of saltglazed brick and old shop fronts, wobbly half-timbering and Georgian sash windows. a market is held every Tuesday, as it has been since ancient times. It's a miracle that Thame has survived as it is, given the pressures on Oxfordshire in recent years. That it has done so is due in large part to the vigilance, not to say vociferousness, of its inhabitants: flag-wavers for David Cameron's vision of localism to a man.  This is the heart of Toryland - and the people of Thame will have felt especially glad when the Coalition came to power. Not only did it bring their preferred Prime Minister to Downing Street, but it seemed to spell the end of John Prescott's regional strategies, with their dirigiste targets for housing growth. These had earmarked Thame, with its population of 11,000, for nearly 800 new houses. according to angela Willson, chairman of one of the residents' associations, the town simply could not absorb an addition on this scale.  When the present Government threw out the South-East Plan, Thame breathed a sigh of relief. But it is now amazed to find itself preparing for another fight - with ministers who are meant to be champions of localism. Recently, the Coalition announced a radical overhaul of the planning system, which aims to throw out the old rulebook, the size of a telephone directory, and replace it with a pamphlet of 52 pages. George Osborne summed up its intent during the Budget: "The default answer to development will be 'yes'." anyone wanting to halt the bulldozers will, in the words of the planning minister Greg Clark, be guilty of "selfish nihilism".  The object is to let development rip through those parts of Britain that aren't formally protected as National Parks or part of the Green Belt. This is most of what us still regard as our green and pleasant land - "all fields, high hedges, and deep-rutted lanes", as George Eliot put it. Labour pursued, with varying degrees of success, the commendable policy of directing development to brownfield sites: postindustrial wastelands that do nothing to enhance the urban environment. That has been thrown out of the window. Nor is any protection being given to agricultural land, which is now fair game for development, even though climate change and increased demand for food make it ever more likely that we will need it in future.  as a consequence, it isn't only Thame that's up in arms. Lydd, among the dunes of Romney Marsh, doesn't want to swallow more housing when its young people are leaving. The Slad Valley - Cider with Rosie country - is similarly dismayed. This month, George McDonic, a past president of the Royal Town Planning Institute, wrote to Wiltshire council on behalf of local groups. He warned that building 37,000 homes across the county over the next 15 years, with 20,000 concentrated in the north and west, would "lead to massive estates on greenfield sites, more characterless car-based suburbia, more traffic congestion and pollution, declining town centres, damage to the environment and loss of agricultural land". Patrick Kinnersly, secretary of the White Horse alliance, senses "mounting resistance in all parts of the county" to plans that would "dump a sprawl of urban extensions and industrial estates into the open countryside".  One might think it axiomatic that the Conservatives would be in favour of - well, of conservation. But their behaviour is horribly reminiscent of the 1980s, when Nicholas Ridley, a gent and watercolourist in his spare time but a card-carrying laissez-faire zealot in public life, introduced the term "Nimby" into public discourse.  Reforming the planning system isn't such a bad idea. But there's a reason that bodies such as the National Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England are furious about the new National Planning Policy Framework. a carefully evolved (if frequently cumbersome) system of checks and balances has been junked in favour of a presumption that big development will get its way.  The National Planning Policy Framework is supposed to be a consultation document - although you couldn't tell from the odium that ministers have been heaping on those who object to it. But advice from the Planning Inspectorate suggests that, even in its draft state, it "is capable of being a material consideration" in planning cases. In other words, this radical change to the way our environment is managed is already being introduced, without so much as a parliamentary debate, much less a vote.  You'd think that Tory MPs would be up in arms. Certainly, there are some fierce champions of their localities. When the South-East Plan threatened to foist 6,000 new homes on the constituency of Tunbridge Wells, its elected representative lashed out. "One of the delights of our area is that there is scarcely a neighbourhood that is not within a short walk of the green fields that surrounds us," he fumed. Who was that valiant MP? The selfsame Greg Clark who now excoriates conservationists for their nihilism. No wonder the residents are more than usually disgusted.  No wonder, too, that the National Trust is up in arms. For more than a century, it has showed a gentlemanly disdain for campaigning. But the Tories have gone so far out of their way to pull its tail that the beast has reared up. and instead of mollifying it, the local government minister Bob Neill has felt the need to blame criticisms of the National Planning Policy Framework on "a carefully choreographed smear campaign by Left-wingers within the national headquarters of pressure groups". Reds under the state beds? Don't make me laugh. To pick a quarrel with the National Trust - whose membership dwarfs that of any political party - the Government must have a pretty compelling argument, especially since it's nursing a bloody nose over the sale of the forests. and it does: we need more houses, right?  Well, no. If there were a demand for new housing, builders would be putting up properties left, right and centre on their  