Here’s an idea – let’s get rid of all the farms in the UK and rely on the globalised world for all of our food. Sound good? I thought not. Well that’s what Keir Starmer’s Labour government is driving us towards.
They – Farmer Harmer Starmer’s mob – are a bunch of over-educated, under-intelligent urban drop-outs who didn’t have the intelligence to get a real job, but just enough smarts to realise that politics is a nice gig with plenty of pay and perks. And from where I sit they know as little about farming as they do about running businesses – Diddly squat!!
I don’t claim to be an expert on matters of rural food production past a few episodes of Clarkson’s Farm and that I get hungry several times a day, but I can see why farmers are a special economic case, something any decent business person would realise.
They produce the thing that humans need to stay alive, food. And as far as the supply chain goes, getting said food on British tables can be more easily guaranteed than relying on Africa, Asia, the Americas, or even other parts of Europe. Leave it to global market forces to feed our population and every war, environmental catastrophe, or shipping disaster anywhere in the world will have serious consequences for the country’s economy and stomachs.
I’m sure people won’t be surprised to learn that I believe taxing wealth, any wealth, be it agricultural or industrial, is tantamount to theft, but when it comes to businesses as vital to society as farming, it’s political theft and economic suicide.
And it’s not like many of these hard-working rural families are getting rich off the fat of the land, because they’re not. They are, like so many in modern Britain, considered ‘rich’, and in Rachel Reeves’ eyes that means a big fat cash cow ready for slaughter.
Sadly for the farmers (and the Chancellor) farming families are only rich on paper by virtue of the value of their land, so there’s no chance of them getting hold of the cash while they’re still alive. It’s no surprise then that Ms Reeves’ tax-weapon of choice here is death duties on family owned farms. Also clear is that the Chancellor also knows farmers are struggling and the only way to get her hands on some of their wealth is to push her way into the queue right behind the Grim Reaper.
In recent years pressures on farmers have seen many forced to trade in their tractors, or perhaps young potential farmers, having seen their parents struggling to make the land pay, sell up and move to town. I’m told this is already a problem for rural communities, but with this latest cash-grab there is even less chance of farms being handed down to the next generation.
Farms are important businesses at the heart of the UK’s economy and society. They are our safety net against total reliance on other countries for our food. This is something our grandparents understood all too well, after enduring two world wars and the food rationing they demanded.
There is a lot of sympathy out there for farmers and rightly so, but what I see in this Grim Reaper Tax is yet another piece of proof that Labour just don’t get business, and never will.
