On Tuesday, I’ll be joining a Westminster protest for the first time in my life. Yes, me—a man more comfortable behind a laptop than in front of a megaphone, who once thought the height of rural activism was separating the recycling correctly. But something has stirred me into action: the plight of British farmers under proposed changes to inheritance tax.
Now, I’m not a farmer. But for five years, I lived in Little Brington, a beautiful farming village in rural Northamptonshire. It was there that I truly grasped the essence of multi-generational farming. Families whose names have been etched on the same fields for centuries, their livelihoods tied to the land like ancient roots. These families don’t just work the land—they are the land.
When I heard Rachel Reeves announce the proposed changes to inheritance tax, my first reaction was disbelief. These policies feel like they’ve been dreamt up in some Whitehall echo chamber by people who think milk comes from Tesco and wheat arrives pre-sliced. The new rules, which could force families to sell parts of their land to pay inheritance tax, don’t just threaten their livelihoods—they threaten their legacies, their histories, and, frankly, our food security.
If you’ve ever watched Clarkson’s Farm, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Jeremy Clarkson, that unlikely champion of agriculture, peeled back the pastoral curtain to reveal the grim economics of British farming. A farmer might own 400 or 500 acres of land worth £10,000 per acre, plus a farmhouse and some battered machinery totalling another couple of million. On paper, they’re millionaires. But in reality? The average British farmer scrapes by on a profit of around £75,000 in a good year. Factor in bad weather, fluctuating market prices, and skyrocketing costs, and it’s easy to see how the balance sheet ends up looking like a punchline to a bad joke.
Yet under these proposed inheritance tax changes, farmers are being treated like cash-rich oligarchs. Imagine a family that’s spent generations stewarding 500 acres of farmland, only to find that the tax bill when the patriarch or matriarch dies forces them to sell off large chunks of their estate. It’s not just a financial blow—it’s an emotional and cultural gut-punch. And it’s happening at a time when we should be doing everything in our power to protect British farming.
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