Keir Starmer proves himself totally incompetent by avoiding key demographic developments Politics

Anyone who has listened to Jeremy Clarkson or Kaleb Cooper recently knows that Britain’s agriculture is already on the brink. Farmers work relentlessly, face razor-thin profit margins and struggle to keep family farms afloat in a system rigged against them.

Then Rachel Reeves comes along and destroys what little hope these hardworking families had left. The pressure on British agriculture is enormous. Rising costs, burdensome regulations and unforgiving bureaucratic hurdles have made making any profit nearly impossible.

Inheritance tax (IHT), a crucial factor for the continuity of family businesses, has become one of the final nails in the coffin. But Labour’s Budget goes even further, launching a brutal attack on Britain’s farming and rural communities, with changes that will devastate family businesses.

While family farms receive a limited concession, taxed at 20% after the £1 million fee, this is still not enough to keep most farms viable once they are passed on to the next generation. However, Labour’s latest proposal would drag even more farmers into this tax trap.

Family farms make up roughly 98% of all farms in Britain, anchoring the local economy, sustaining communities and strengthening national food security. Labour’s inheritance tax changes are pushing these small farms out of existence. Rachel Reeves and her team don’t seem to understand the unique nature of farming.

This land is not a “property” in the way urban bureaucrats understand it; it is the basis of farmers’ livelihoods and the continuity of food production. Yet Labour’s approach seems to be to tax and pressure farmers as if they were owners of luxury estates.

Labor claims this tax attack is necessary to curb the influence of wealthy investors who buy up farmland as a tax haven. But in reality, it is small and medium-sized farms that will suffer, as they will be forced to sell land or close completely if they cannot afford the crippling tax burden.

It’s a simplistic, callous approach from a party that seems completely clueless about the economic engine that family farms represent in Britain. With every farm that goes bankrupt, we lose some of our food sovereignty, leaving us increasingly dependent on expensive, often lower-quality imported goods, which are vulnerable to global price spikes and supply chain disruptions.

This is nothing short of an economic and cultural attack, orchestrated by a Labor government with no grasp of reality. Reeves and her colleagues clearly assume that companies can simply absorb the blow.

They are blind to the fact that family farms do not operate with endless profit margins. The average farmer in Britain earns a fraction of what MPs like Reeves earn, but Labor appears intent on wringing them dry to fuel their reckless spending agenda.

And what experience do Reeves, Keir Starmer or anyone on the Labor frontbench have of actually running a business? No. They’ve never faced the brutal reality of payroll or the difficult choice of keeping the lights on during tough times.

They are content to come up with budgets and taxes that fit neatly on paper but devastate people in real life. Labour’s tax raid will force farmers across the country to sell land that has been in their families for generations, halting activities that form the backbone of the British countryside.

The impact will not only be felt by farmers. It will flow through the entire local food chain, crushing small businesses, local suppliers and the communities that depend on them.

Labor’s policies are not only misguided, but reckless and destructive. They reveal a profound divide between Westminster and the countryside, between policymakers who make a living from tax payers’ money and farmers who make a living from the land.

Britain deserves better than politicians who plunder family farms with one hand and trumpet their commitment to hardworking families with the other. For the sake of our rural communities, local economies and the future of British agriculture, it is time to oppose this grossly unfair budget. Aren’t farmers Labour’s so-called working people?

Britain’s farmers are not cash cows for the ideological whims of the Labor Party – they are the lifeblood of this country. If Labor gets its way, there won’t be much of that lifeblood left.

Richard Thomson was the Reform UK candidate for Braintree in the 2024 general election.