Labour fantasists want us to believe it’s the farmers who are imagining things

Blower cartoon: The jolly harmer
Blower cartoon: The jolly harmer

Remember, remember the 19th of November, when farmers exercised their right to roam across London in protest at Labour’s inheritance tax hike. I’ve never seen so many wellington boots. Just as well, the weather was foul. Pouring rain and tractors topped with snow.

I met folks from Ulster and Scotland; a kid had flown down alone to save the family farm (permission from the headmaster). I spoke at length with a man from Wiltshire about crop circles – who makes them and how, he doesn’t know, but he charges good money to look.

“Some visitors,” he said with a twinkle, “claim they’re a ‘fur-till-itee’ symbol and try to use ‘em for immoral purposes.” He’s knocked that right on the head.

Atop a stage erected on Whitehall, farmer Olly Harrison asked the question on all of our lips: has the PM ever got up “at 4am to feed cows and get pooed on?” Actually, yes. Sir Keir Starmer told GB News that he understands the countryside because “my first job was on the farm”. That said farm was Fisher Price and the job was playing with plastic “moo-moo cows” is by-the-by: we are used to make-believe from a party whose Chancellor thinks she ran a bank when she actually manned the tills.

What’s insulting is to be told by such fantasists that it’s the farmers who are imagining things, that the tax rises aren’t that high and are easily offset. At a timely meeting of the agricultural committee, minister Steve Reed – who hails from bucolic Croydon – urged anyone affected to “take professional tax advice” to reduce their liability. Having raised a tax, the Government now seems to be encouraging citizens to avoid it.

“I don’t think you should look at change as inherently negative,” he added. His civil servants didn’t look at him at all. They stared into the distance like grazing cows.

Back at the rally, opposition politicians made a pitch for the angry rural voter. Ed Davey fumbled his speech and assured us the Lib Dems would always defend “the family fart” (I’ll believe it when I see it). Tories clumped through puddles in suspiciously clean wellies and obviously new Barbour jackets: Marie Antoinette visiting the serfs, dressed as a milkmaid. Farage was cheered. Tweed speaks to tweed.

But the real star of the show was Jeremy Clarkson. For years, I loathed this man, a legacy of being forced to watch Top Gear as a child, when, squeezed into skinny jeans, he’d squeeze himself into a Ford Fiesta and insist it purred like a lion. Shudder.

But the boy who refused to grow up has aged disgracefully well, dragging himself on stage after a heart operation and warning us that he was “off my tits on codeine and paracetamol”. Clarkson joked about stupid politicians, whingeing consumers and dodgy foreign chicken – so packed with chlorine it “tastes like a swimming pool with a beak” – and left the crowd feeling understood and, most importantly, believed.

I also saw Barry Gardiner, the Labour MP for Brent North, tell a farmer he found his claims of impoverishment unbelievable. After hearing his assets vs income, Gardiner observed: “You have a very inefficient use of capital”.

“That’s farming,” replied the farmer, with obvious exasperation.