On the campaign trail

I happened to be shooting on Budget day. The weather and the pheasants tried to lift the sense of foreboding among my fellow Guns, who were mostly East Anglian farmers, but the news filtering through from Westminster did not raise our spirits. The Government’s decision to introduce inheritance tax on agricultural land caused despondency among the Guns, which was mirrored in the countryside as a whole (see p6). That despondency has started to turn to anger as the Government has thus far been unwilling to accept that its policy does not deliver its commitment to protect family farms.

This is not just a bad policy; it is also bad politics. At a stroke Labour has undone all the work that it did in opposition to heal its rift with the countryside. Family farms remain the backbone of rural communities and they are central to the public vision of the British countryside. It seemed, from the careful courting of the industry by Sir Keir Starmer and his colleagues, that the Labour Party had grasped the political importance of farming and the countryside. 

However, last week’s Budget hit many farming businesses like a hammer and farmers have reacted with real anger, not least because of the repeated commitments Labour had made, both in opposition and in government, that it would not change inheritance tax reliefs. This was compounded by the suggestion that farmers should have planned for something that the Government had specifically said it was not going to do. All over the country there are men and women sitting in farmhouses absolutely terrified that their death will see the end of generations of their family farming their land. 

The Chancellor’s decision, however, will have political implications far beyond the farmhouse. Around 500,000 people work in agriculture in the UK, with two-thirds of those being farmers, business partners, directors or spouses. Spread around the country, it might seem that this cohort is electorally insignificant, especially as there may be an assumption among Labour strategists that the majority arenot their natural supporters. That, however, would be to misunderstand the totemic status of farming, the countryside and especially family farms among a much wider proportion of voters.

In the same way that there are not many more than 10,000 fishermen in the UK, yet they had a seismic impact on the Brexit referendum, the future of family farms could have a significant effect on the Government’s standing with a much wider part of the electorate. The simple ambition of family farmers to pass on their farms to the next generation, in the same or better condition than they inherited it, is something that everyone will understand, whether they live in town or country. 

Politically toxic

The countryside is central to people’s understanding of Britishness and a threat to the family farms that make up so much of the countryside is therefore a threat to us all. The idea that those farms might have to be sold off to meet the demands of the treasury — with the most likely buyers in many cases being investors and large farming businesses — is politically toxic. 

The fight over inheritance tax looks like being a long one and the Government should be careful about introducing other policies that could be seen as an attack on the countryside. It has outstanding manifesto commitments to ban snares and hike firearms licence fees, and there are some MPs who are keen to get stuck into gun control, licensing of game shooting and restrictions on wildlife management. 

Farmers deserve our support in the fight for their livelihoods, but as ever an attack on one part of the countryside should be treated as an attack on all. Nobody just farms, shoots, hunts, stalks, drinks in their local pub or uses their village post office. The countryside is a jigsaw; remove one piece and it does not work. That is why we are always stronger together. I am quite sure that Shooting Times readers — if they are not farmers themselves — will show their support for the farming community.