Nigel Farage has warned the Government’s that today’s 10,000-strong farmers protest is “day one of a real fight” right across the country, as he was warmly welcomed by the rally.
The Reform UK leader spoke to the Daily Express just after he met with a group of farmers from his Clacton constituency.
Mr Farage demanded that at the very least, the Government must raise the planned inheritance tax thresholds so as not to destroy family farming as we know it in Britain.
He explained: “We’ve got a Clacton contingent here, and all representing your typical family farm, and these are 250-300 acre farms.
“They make very little money at the moment and yet land values have been massively inflated because a lot of millionaires have bought up farm land to avoid paying IHT.”
The Clacton MP added: “The problem with what the government has done is your small holders will survive – someone who’s got 10 acres, someone who’s got a few sheep and does a few vegetables.
“The giant agri-businesses will survive, it’s those in the middle who have tended the countryside, in the case of some families for centuries, who are going to face a massive problem, and many of them are going to get wiped out.
“I just think someone in the Treasury has done their sums wrong.”
Asked whether Rachel Reeves’ plans also threaten food security, Mr Farage said Britain has a wider problem with underestimating how important the issue is, and is at the heart of wider debates about Net Zero, solar power and re-wilding.
He also made the stark warning that he is “convinced” that if Ms Reeves is allowed to push through her changes that “by the end of the next five years they’ll even ban shooting.”
Asked to respond to claims by left wing commentariat that the government should take ownership of land to decide what is grown there, Mr Farage joked that while Britain is “not yet quite” at the point of being compared to Joseph Stalin’s liquidation of the kulaks, the current policy direction feels like a “broader war against rural England”.
He also took a swipe at the recent Welsh Government report which claimed rural Britain is “racist” due to “barriers created by exclusions and racism”.
Mid-comments, Mr Farage interjected: “Oh and I almost forgot, too many of [the countryside] are white, which seems to really upset them!”
He blasted Labour and claimed: “They’ve got no respect for our traditions, our culture, our countryside, and I think this is the start of a real fight.
“This is day one of a real fight. I want to see what’s happening in London, what’s happening in market towns, right now across the country.
“We’ll do it in a very British way – we’re not like the French, we’re not quite as revolting in the way we behave – but I think this is the start of something I really do.”
Mr Farage was applauded by farmers at the protest when he emerged onto Whitehall, with one attendee heard shouting: “Sort them out, Nigel!”
