The last time tens of thousands of farmers and rural folk took to the streets of Westminster was in 2002 when the Countryside Alliance protested New Labour’s Hunting Act. Some 400,000 people filled the streets, from actor Vinnie Jones to Earl Spencer and a much younger Nigel Farage.
Then Prime Minister Tony Blair later regretted unleashing the fury of the countryside, admitting it was one of his biggest mistakes. “If I’d proposed solving the pension problem by compulsory euthanasia for every fifth pensioner, I’d have got less trouble for it,” he recalled.
It exposed a deep rift in Britain between town and country
Labour are now making the same mistake again. Pitting farmers against the NHS, as Rachel Reeves did earlier this week, insisting the ‘farming tax’ was needed to fill gaps in funding, is just underlining how much they are the party of the bloated public sector and not independent earners like family farmers.
It’s no surprise that Labour peer Ann Mallalieu has broken ranks this week to call them “an urban party” divorced from the rural community. She was the woman behind the Countryside Alliance’s massive Liberty and Livelihood March 22 years ago.
The same slogan could be used today as Labour’s new inheritance tax is an imposition on both these aspects of farmers’ lives. Small family farms may be asset-rich because of the soaring rise in land value, but they do not generate the cash to pay out this tax and that imperils the ability of farmers to pass on their business intact to the next generation.
As footballer turned actor turned countryman Vinnie Jones said back in 2002: “People should not poke their noses into other people’s business.” This week Baroness Mallalieu called it an “act of political spite”.
The same deep prejudice appears to have been provoked by this latest clash with former Tony Blair advisor, John McTernan, saying Labour should “do to the farmers what Thatcher did to the miners”. Keir Starmer may have disassociated himself from this outrageous comment, but it evokes echoes of a more savage confrontation between the Left and family farmers.
Back in the Soviet Union, communists demonised peasant farmers, believing they were class enemies withholding food from the government. Eventually, it was Stalin who seized their farms and imprisoned or executed the so-called “Kulaks”. Unsurprisingly the result of this forced collectivisation was a deadly famine that killed millions of citizens.
“No farmers, no food,” say today’s protestors and a disruption of their traditional business will surely lead to greater dependence on imports of food from abroad. It is a price worth paying, suggests Reeves who is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. There are very few super-rich landowners exploiting current tax rules, whereas there are many more farmers who just get by producing food in a highly competitive market. Not only is the Chancellor making this task more difficult, but she is further alienating her party from the countryside.
As Baroness Mallalieu told the Express, it is “very bad politics”.
But Labour under ‘Calamity’ Keir Starmer has managed to make gaffe after gaffe in a very short space of time. And despite appearing to be highly pleased with herself, Rachel Reeves has a complete inability to understand the world of business.
Just last week, figures revealed that the British economy had barely grown by 0.1% in the first few months of the Labour government. Fiscal uncertainty has caused a shortfall of £140million in lost stamp duty over the past six months, while 70 top retailers yesterday warned the Government they might have to shut down shops and lose staff because of her ill-advised rises in National Insurance and the minimum wage.
Time after time, Labour are making it more difficult for business people to make money and yet it is these people who are expected to pay the taxes to fund their precious public sector.
Fuelled by their traditional prejudice, it appears Labour have made yet another misstep by provoking unrest among our rural communities. They boasted about being the adults in the room before the election, but they have proved to be nothing but petulant children punishing the very people they need to make Britain rich again.
Repeating the same mistakes of previous Left-wing regimes, Labour under Reeves and Starmer is proving to be that very definition of economic idiocy.
