The final straw? Farmers park tractors on Labour’s lawn

Thousands of farmers have today descended on a snowy Westminster in opposition to changes in inheritance tax rules brought in by Rachel Reeve’s recent budget. The protest, one of the largest staged by the sector for years, marks not only dissent towards the closure of a tax loophole but the culmination of decades of growing pressure on the farming community.

Is this the final straw in a long drawn out fight for survival, or will the tractors on Labour’s lawn lead to the government’s first screeching U-turn?    

Under the plans announced last month, farms worth more than £1 million will be subject to a 20% inheritance tax from April 2026 through changes to agricultural property relief and business property relief. Many would say it’s an easy win for a Labour Party that has traditionally found its voter base in the cities.

Us city-dwellers love a trip to the countryside; the rolling hills, the green fields of sheep, muddy paths and charming villages, but few understand the farming way of life that glues this rural patchwork together. I grew up in a farming community, but to most of the population the sector is as unglamourous as it is misunderstood. Many not realising that this way of life is central to creating the countryside that we all love on our days off, or to putting the food on our plates in the cozy pub at the end of our Sunday countryside stroll.

Celebrity farmers, such as Jeremy Clarkson, have helped to raise the farming’s profile in the public psyche. Still, the sector has been an easy target for Labour to turn the screw on perceived rich landowners trying to shelter their assets from inheritance tax (Clarkson doesn’t really benefit the argument at this point). Take the billionaire James Dyson whose 36,000 acres of farmland could see his successors hit with £122m of duties. Such a scalp has drawn praise across social media, with socialists and metropolitan lefties no-doubt foaming at the mouth.

Yet it’s the small family farms who will pay the real price, with the National Farmers’ Union estimating that up to three quarters of farms will be affected by the new tax. First the supermarkets squeezed their margins, then came Brexit to mess with their subsidies, ushering in a controversial new era of payment schemes based around environmental outcomes that are likely to leave farmers considerably worse off. For many these latest changes will be a fight for survival, for others it will simply be time to give up.

Some commentators have drawn parallels with the striking miners of the 1980s: an industry pushed out by societal and industrial progress. But whilst we no longer need coal (and Britain has been happy to accept energy imports for decades) we will always need homegrown food, even more so in a future world where tariffs will undoubtedly build barriers. When supply dwindles, choices are reduced, and prices rise, who will we blame?

The miners didn’t win their battle in the 1980s; the government remained steadfast and whole communities were devastated for a generation. Whether this government allows the same to happen to our family farms remains to be seen.

If the organisers of today’s protests (who have gained much fame through social media), assisted by the likes of Clarkson, are able to penetrate the public conscience through communicating the importance of farming to our country’s wellbeing, then maybe the argument can be won in the farmers’ favour. If not, this may really be the final straw for British farming as we know it.