My first thought upon seeing today’s revolt of the farmers was just how gloriously normal it looked. For more than a year London has been besieged by wild-eyed plummy leftists and fuming Gen X’ers screaming blue murder about the Jewish State. Now, for sweet relief, we get men and women in waxed jackets and sensible winter headwear taking to the streets, not to rage against a faraway land but to defend their own land from the grubby taxing of the Labour government. Now that’s proper protesting. It made me want a warm beer.
A malady has infected the influential classes – we might call it farmerphobia
What happened today was extraordinary. It was a revolt of the sensibles. It was a mutiny of the ‘normies’, to borrow that condescending word leftists use to refer to anyone they consider ‘conventional’: ie, works for a living, is tattoo-free, knows what a woman is, and has never spent £25 on dirty fries in Hackney Wick. There wasn’t a keffiyeh in sight, just a sea of tweed caps and polite placards. ‘No farmers, no food’, said one. ‘Rachel Reeves, Queen of Thieves’, said an edgier banner. I bet the Met won’t have to scour photos of this protest to check for hate crimes.
It was first and foremost an uprising against Labour’s changes to inheritance tax on farms. From April 2026, farms worth more than £1million will be slapped with an inheritance tax rate of 20 per cent. It will be disastrous for cash-poor family farms. As one of today’s placards put it: ‘The end is Keir for family farms.’
But there’s more to this rebellion. It feels like the mighty roar of that other England. That England unloved by the metropolitan elites. That England that rarely troubles the idle minds of city millennials who never stop to wonder where the milk in their six-quid latte comes from. That England that is often the butt of jokes about yokels and improper behaviour with sheep. Today, the England of mud and milking, of planting and producing, rudely intruded into our complacent capital, and I for one loved it.
So much smug scorn has been heaped on farmers these past few days. I’d do to the farmers ‘what Margaret Thatcher did to the miners’, said ex-Labour spindoctor John McTernan. Go on then, I dare you – pop down to the next farmers’ protest, truncheon at the ready, Orgreave-style. We will be very interested to see what happens. ‘Farmers have hoarded land for too long’, wails Will Hutton. The new tax is just the shake-up these glorified squatters need, apparently.
Peruse social media and you’ll see sniffy young radicals who only get muddy once a year at Glastonbury branding the farmers ‘rich and ‘reactionary’. The ingratitude is staggering: there they are eating a hipster burger with one hand and tweeting at the people who raised, fed and killed that burger with the other.
James O’Brien of LBC is the embodiment of the townie disdain for the revolting farmers. In his best patrician tone, gifted him by Ampleforth, he clashed with a farmer called Charlie on his phone-in show. He dismissed Charlie’s every cry of concern and suggested he just sell off some of his land, as if that’s no big deal. ‘Okay mate’, said O’Brien, superciliously, to which Charlie replied: ‘I’m not your mate! I hate you!’ Ouch. It was a remarkable insight into the cultural chasm separating the cosseted city elites that produce little more than opinion from the men and women who make the very stuff of life.
A malady has infected the influential classes – we might call it farmerphobia. They seem to view farmers as a blot on the landscape, both literally and figuratively. Farmers are seen as dangerous Faragists. As gullible fanboys of that frightful opinion-haver, and fellow farmer, Jeremy Clarkson. They’re the sort of ruddy-faced, country-ale types who – brace yourselves – probably voted for Brexit.
And they’re seen as polluters too. They’re forever being chastised for all those cows they keep whose farts are apparently dragging us towards the heat death of our planet. As that moaner George Monbiot once said, agriculture is the most destructive industry of all. Farmers are treated as borderline noxious. Both their conservative beliefs and their carbon emissions are talked up as devilish pollutants that threaten our world.
Farmerphobia is a Europe-wide phenomenon. Across the continent, governments are enforcing policies that seriously hurt farmers. From the punishing Net Zero policies of the Dutch government to Germany’s abolition of tax breaks for farmers to France’s reduction in state subsidies for farmers’ diesel fuel, everywhere one looks farmers are getting it in the neck. In Ireland, there was even talk of pressuring farmers to cull 200,000 cows in order that Ireland might reach its Net Zero targets. Sacrificing animals to appease the gods of weather – rarely has the neo-pagan irrationalism of our eco-elites been on such frank, grim display.
In all these places, farmers have fought back. And now they’re fighting back here too. Good. It is a testament to the aloofness of our rulers that they can be so cavalier about the men and women who make the food our nations need. And it is a testament to the spirit of our farmers that they’re not taking it lying down.
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