ROBERT HARDMAN: 'Starmer the Farmer Harmer' chanted the rural army

You could hardly have asked for a more old-fashioned protest outside the gates of Downing Street: everyone thanking the police, everyone doffing their caps at the capital’s war memorials, everyone being so frightfully well-behaved that, upon being asked not to march up to Parliament Square owing to sheer pressure of numbers, all very courteously complied.

Many wore ties. They had also brought so much food for London’s food banks that one collection point next to the Ministry of Defence ended up being overwhelmed by a vegetable pile-up.

‘Don’t bring your tractors,’ the farmers had been told. With the exception of a trio of horn-honking monsters trundling around Trafalgar Square, plus a fleet of children’s pedal-powered models, that edict was observed to the letter.

Besides, for every farmer attending yesterday’s rally in central London, there was a spouse or a child or a parent back on the farm who needed the family tractor because they were still doing that actual farming stuff. ‘Working from home’ is not a lifestyle choice for this lot, as it might be for the civil servants nominally employed in those half-empty offices up and down Whitehall.

All in all, a dull day for the police. No obscene banners. ‘Starmer Farmer Harmer’ was about the worst of it. I rather enjoyed another saying: ‘Labour Might Care If We Grew Avocados.’

There was no hateful chanting with menaces. These farmers were not yet ready to copy the tactics of your regular weekly protesters in these parts. Mind you, if anyone had tried to whip up a chorus of ‘From the river to the sea!’, back would have come the reply: ‘Avon or Severn?’

But let no one in Downing Street imagine that yesterday’s earnest civility will last. Indeed, I wouldn’t give it much more shelf life than a free-range chicken.

As all made clear after yesterday’s show of strength, this was just the beginning. Time and again, the emotions ignited by last month’s Budget were laid bare.

Contrary to Labour’s insistence that only a wealthy handful will be hit by its proposed removal of inheritance tax relief on farms, yesterday’s green-clad army were adamant that it will decimate the industry. 

Tom Bradshaw, president of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), had barely started his first speech of the day when he lost it. ‘The human impact of this policy is simply not acceptable. It’s wrong . . .’ he said, struggling with his own visceral sense of despair as his chin trembled. His audience burst into applause until Mr Bradshaw regained his composure and ploughed on.

He was addressing a full hall of NFU members in the main conference chamber at Church House, round the corner from Parliament.

So many members wanted to attend this event that the NFU had split the day into a series of identical sessions with room for 800 members at each one. Bacon rolls or a vegan mushroom bap were on offer beforehand (guess which ran out first).

Mr Bradshaw told us that he had met Steve Reed, the Secretary of State for the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) just the night before. Afterwards, he told me that the mood had been ‘calm, passionate, listening – but no action’.

For, as every farmer will tell you, Mr Reed had categorically promised, before the election, that there would be no change to farming’s tax status. Then a couple of cursory, casual sentences in Rachel Reeves’s Budget showed that this had been a lie, with catastrophic implications for family farming. 

Mr Reed has now admitted to Mr Bradshaw and the NFU that Ms Reeves did not consult him. ‘We need to sit down with the Chancellor, not a junior minister,’ the NFU leader said tersely.

This indoor event was billed as a ‘mass lobby’ ahead of individual meetings with MPs. Less than a ten-minute walk away, the crowds were filling Whitehall for the less formal ‘mass rally’. 

The first snowfall of winter (in London at any rate) plus heavy rain plus the need for a miserably early start might be regarded as sub-optimal for most demonstrations. 

This lot seemed to relish the weather. ‘We ordered this so everyone could feel at home,’ declared Olly Harrison, one of the five activist farmers behind the rally.

At one point, after paramedics were summoned to treat someone who had collapsed in the crowd, it transpired that the poor chap had ‘overheated’.

Up at the front, I found Grace Baty, ten, and brother Harry, six, who had travelled down from Northumberland this very morning from the family’s 300-acre farm near Hexham. ‘He’s really keen to go into farming,’ Grace told me, nudging her brother, ‘but I’d like to be included too.’

That, in a nutshell, was what yesterday was all about. Despite a litany of complaints about rising costs, cheap imports, slashed environmental grants and even a new Treasury wheeze to reclassify pick-up trucks as taxable company cars, the nub of this whole protest was heredity. 

This lot remain adamant that thousands of family farms will no longer pass from one generation to the next without incurring an inheritance tax bill which will force future generations to sell-up. The Treasury insists otherwise.

Read More

Moment Jeremy Clarkson is cheered by crowds at farmers protest as he slams BBC

Having interviewed dozens of protesters yesterday, I would sum up the average case study as follows: a third-generation family farm of between 250 and 300 acres, owned by a grandparent and barely making a profit which now faces a tax bill of £450,000. The only way round it is to set up a trust and hope Grandpa outlives the seven-year rule. Otherwise, poor Grandpa will need to meet his Maker before the new rules kick in April 2026.

That is pretty much the case with Clare Wise, 44, from County Durham (albeit a fifth-generation farmer after 139 years unbroken family service through two world wars). The mother of three, who runs her father’s farm with husband Stewart, delivered one of the speeches of the day.

She pointed out that her farm might be ‘worth £4 million on paper . . . but last year I struggled to buy school shoes for my children.’ At one point, she had to pause as the emotions kicked in. She swallowed hard before concluding: ‘Buckle up Keir Starmer, because this is a fight you’re not going to win.’

The politicians came and went. I saw Reform leader Nigel Farage being lauded warmly through the throng – ‘these are my people’, he said later – but he was not invited on stage. 

According to Mr Farage’s team - and some inside the farming camp – Tory minders had told the organisers that Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch would not share a platform with Mr Farage. 

Her pledge to overturn Labour’s policy if elected PM was clearly deemed the more important outcome. 

The politicians, it must be said, were largely incidental, though farming Labour peer Baroness Mallalieu got a barnstormer for saying: ‘I’m ashamed and embarrassed that the Government I support is treating you so shabbily!’

Early on, I spotted celebrity farmyard hero Jeremy Clarkson making slow but happy progress through crowds of well-wishers and selfie-hunters. 

He had arranged for a coach to bring his Oxfordshire neighbours to the capital and pick him up from his London flat en route. 

Having recently had a heart operation, he was also nursing a bad back. ‘I’m off my t**s on codeine and paracetamol,’ he admitted. Though well aware that his detractors would paint him as a wealthy landowner for whom the Budget is a mere inconvenience, he was determined to attend.

His finale combined barbs about government policy – such as allowing imported chlorinated chicken ‘which tastes like a swimming pool with a beak’ and eco-friendly sheep fodder which his flock viewed ‘in the same way that a five-year-old looks at an olive’ – with some BBC-bashing and a sombre plea to the PM: ‘Accept that this was rushed through. Admit it and back down.’

Mr Harrison drew things to a close with a plea to pick up any litter (they did) and then form an orderly queue for the precincts of Westminster in the hope of finding the local MP. 

Predictably, those in Tory and Lib Dem seats had a better chance than those with a Labour MP. 

As I say, yesterday was about as British as one could imagine, as far removed from the traffic-clogging, manure-spraying, food-dumping tactics of continental agricultural protests as could be.

So what next? As one parting West Country farmer, heading for a homeward train, declared proudly: ‘Next time, we’re going to be French.’