​The tax plans shows ‘we’re not quite all in this together​’

This shows how out of touch it is with rural communities. The massive meeting the UFU held confirmed support from local politicians, but this is a problem created at Westminster and it is one that can only be solved there. It alone has responsibility for taxation. It is a huge problem in farming that cannot be blamed on Brexit. Taxation is a national issue for all EU member states, so there is no escape from this being a problem created by the government; it cannot blame anyone else and if it fails to resolve this, it alone must accept all the blame for the consequences. The posters carried at protests are hard hitting. No land, no farmers, no food sums up the situation perfectly. Before he allowed his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to come up with this mean-spirited, ill-conceived Budget, Keir Starmer would never have envisaged being branded “Starmer, the farmer harmer”. This is what he has allowed Reeves to make him. He has shown poor judgement and political weakness. He has defended to the hilt a flawed part of a flawed Budget and left himself in a situation, where if logic prevails and changes are delivered, he will be seen to have backed down. He has allowed his Chancellor to use her Budget to wage old-fashioned class warfare type Labour politics against land owners. She wanted to curb tax avoidance by big estates using agricultural property relief (APR) beyond the scope of its original intention, but has scooped cash poor family farms into her net while the bigger estates will employ specialists to minimise the threat. The best this tax could raise is £500 million out of a £40 billion tax take to fill a deficit of £22 billion left by the previous government. The budget was to drive economic growth, but the UK economy is once again stagnant. Inflation has ticked up and there is worse to come as employers pass on the impact of higher national insurance contributions via higher prices for consumers.

The DEFRA minister, trying to play good cop to the Starmer and Reeves bad cop act, has said he will take steps to ensure farmers are treated “fairly” by retailers and processors. That is rich coming from a government whose Budget has treated family farms less fairly than any retailer could. To the frustration of the government, farmers have won public sympathy. People can see through political spin to a government picking on a section of society, deeming them rich owners of big assets, when in reality those assets are returning less than one per cent because farming is an unprofitable business. Protests on a big enough scale can have an impact. We have seen this first hand in Europe. The mass protests by farmers across many EU member states secured a big change of heart in Brussels. Crucially, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, backed farmers and promised policies to deliver a more farmer-friendly, less bureaucratic CAP. To that has been added a focus shift to ease green diktats, while the new EU farm commissioner, Luxembourg’s Christophe Hansen, has committed to returning respect and dignity to farmers as well as a drive to get more young people into the industry. This was a good outcome from protests that won a reasonable degree of public support, because they minimised disruption and secured backing for the message that farmers were victims of unfair treatment by Brussels and a dysfunctional food chain. In sporting terms this was a result. The monolith that is the European Commission was moved. So if the European Commission can be made to roll over and see logic, can the same be achieved against a Budget that is bad and illogical in so many ways. This was a poorly thought out Budget by a party seemingly struggling to understand the difference between being in opposition and being in government. It is a Budget unfair by any standards and not only for farmers. The public sector, so loved by the government at the expense of industry, has been protected from key pension changes around inheritance tax. Hospitals and health trusts, but not GPs, care homes or schools, have been protected from the increased national insurance contributions. A case of “we’re not quite all in this together” or as George Orwell put it in Animal Farm, of some pigs being a lot more equal than others.