Guido hears rapid efforts are currently underway to organise gilet-jaune-style protests among disparate farming groups on the back of Reeves’ budget measures yesterday. Reeves went back on Labour’s pre-election promise and axed Agricultural Property Relief on Inheritance Tax, replacing it with a 50% rate of relief on assets worth over £1 million…
Back before the election when Labour was pretending to be low-tax the then Shadow Environment Secretary Steve Reed reassured the Country Land and Business Association conference: “We have no intention of changing APR.” He twice confirmed Labour wouldn’t alter the tax relief as the CLA’s president stressed it would “in a single swipe would take small farms out”…
One protest organiser tells Guido: “We haven’t seen this kind of anger in among farmers since the Countryside March.” Co-conspirators will remember the 400,000-strong rural protests back in 2002 which threatened to topple Blair…
Alongside an expected massive petition there are likely to be organised marches. One incensed farmer tells Guido:
“I look forward to bringing my tractor and other agricultural machinery to Whitehall, and maybe also to Labour’s conference in Liverpool next year. If Labour wants to close down family farming we’ll close down Labour first. They have lied through their teeth about supporting farmers and deserve to be held to account.”
Another tells Guido that this is “going to make food more expensive for everyone. Farming is already tough, and piling on these costs will force smaller farms out, which will mean fewer local options and higher prices at the store. People need to understand that when we struggle, the whole country feels it at the dinner table.” The CLA now estimates that capping APR at £1 million will affect 70,000 UK farms. The policy is predicted to have the effect of “damaging family businesses and destabilising food security.“ £1 million is low – huge farm conglomerates will be the only ones able to absorb the cost…
Rural sources say if farmers and the public get their act together we should expect to see “buckets full of sh*t getting dumped on parliament” before too long. Reeves may come to regret this one…
UPDATE: The NFU is organising a rally in Westminster for Tuesday 19th November.
Starmer said to Robert Peston this afternoon:
“I’m fed up with the fact that families across the country see their bills go up and down on energy businesses bills go up and down on energy because of the actions of Putin or Trump across the world.”
