Neonic's with a very few exceptions, are banned in the EU and UK and have been for several years. The exceptions have been primarily non-flowering crops, such as sugar beet. With only 4 beet processing factories still operating within the UK, beet is a realtively uncommon crop now as it is uneconomic to transport it far to be processed.
That said, recent research suggests that despite neonic's being used in minute amounts and also readily broken down by soil microbes, enough does survive in the soil to be problematic (including via run-off and uptake by wild plants ("weeds"), which do flower and pose problems for insects).
The big agricultural problem is aphids, not so much in themselves, but as vectors for virus diseases.
What class of compound is the pesticide of choice for field crops now, I don't know, although a browse of a UK/EU agrucultural supplier would answer that.
If weather is poor, insect numbers plummet, or more accurately, never build up.