Richard Bradshaw is reading English Literature at Hertford College, University of Oxford.
The Labour Government is engaged in a concerted attack on England’s rural heritage. If this wasn’t already apparent, following last month’s Budget, it is now all but clear. It was, we had been warned, going to be a budget of “difficult decisions” – in other words, one which would cynically renege on many promises made during the election.
In the end, of these broken promises there were plenty. But of all the false assurances that were made by the then-opposition, undoubtedly the most cataclysmic announcement on 30 October was the news that family farms worth over one million pounds will, as of April 2026, for the first time be subjected to an inheritance tax.
Of course, one million sounds like a lot: if everybody else has to pay inheritance tax, why not farmers? But as farmers keep trying to tell us, being rich in assets is not the same as being rich in cash. Many farms, which have been in the same family for generations and are unable to stump up this bill, now face the prospect of being broken up or sold off altogether.
The result will be a transformation not only in farming but in rural life as much of the country knows it – a transformation which nobody has asked for, which nobody wants, and which is to be implemented on the sly.
Far from this policy only effecting a small minority of extremely wealthy landowners – including those who, as the government has suggested, have bought farmland with the sole purpose of avoiding inheritance tax – the reality is that the biggest beneficiaries of this tax will be corporate farming estates and housing developers, whilst the biggest losers will be the poor hardworking farmers themselves.
Although the Government claimed that it would not raise taxes for ‘working people’, it has ended up putting at risk the livelihoods of arguably the most hardworking people in Britain: those who put food on our tables, who work for the best part all day every day with no holidays, and who, at the end of it all, may lose everything due to a season of bad weather.
Yet for all that the British people are unlikely to be convinced by the Government’s presumption that those who till the land are not ‘working people’, the introduction of an IHT on farms points to a more disquieting pattern framing Labour’s agenda. And no, I am not just talking about the repeated lying.
Even more disconcerting than Labour’s betrayal of rural voters (many of whom, let us not forget, took Sir Keir Starmer at his word when he pledged to restore trust back into politics) is the Government’s increasingly zealous assault on England’s countryside.
Its decision to impose a crippling tax on the children of dead farmers thus has to be seen in conjunction with its other proposals, most especially its plans to tear up greenbelt protection of the countryside.
It is only once looked at in this way that the reality of what Labour is doing becomes unavoidably apparent. Since the Budget, many explanations have been provided for the Government’s decision: some have argued that the government is out of touch, others that it lacks a basic understanding about the economics of the farming sector.
What all these diagnoses have in common is a belief that the Chancellor’s decision results from a lack of judgement. Shortly following the Budget, for example, TV presenter Kirstie Allsop took to social media to rage that the Government has “zero understanding of what matters to rural voters.”
The truth, however, is arguably much more unnerving: it is not so much that the Government doesn’t understand as that it doesn’t care. Or we might go even further: under Starmer, the current government is one which is categorically hostile to rural England and the values of its inhabitants.
This tendency was already apparent from Labour’s plan for the greenbelt: a plan which threatens to transform vast swathes of the countryside into yet more spawling, lifeless housing estates. Now, through a plan that jeopardises the financial viability of many family-run farms, Labour is intensifying its attack to bring about a permanent – and no doubt irreversible – change in the country’s rural economy and environment.
Both therefore have to be seen as two sides of the same coin; for one thing, by forcing farmers to sell off their land, more agricultural estates will be freed up for development. Rather than acting out of ignorance, Labour’s announcement last week has an ideological impetus that seeks to root out what it perceives to be the privilege of life in the country.
On the whole, rural England tends after all to be more conservative than the rest of the country, both in the way it votes but also in the values that it holds. And nowhere is this more evidently displayed than through the profession of farming – a profession which, passed down from generation to generation, can be said to embody the very essence of what conservatism is all about.
This means that farming is not like any other industry or business. What it also means is that the tradition of farming in this country fundamentally contradicts Labour’s core ideological beliefs, particularly in that it depends upon the existence of accumulated assets and the ability to pass these on to one’s offspring.
Most farmers are not in it for the money; if they were, most would have sold up or walked away long ago. Nor are farmers necessarily in the business because they enjoy it. If anything, most farmers are committed to their profession out of a sense of loyalty and duty: out of a sense, that is, that they are keeping alive a tradition that runs deep in English culture.
It is the idea that they will be able to pass this tradition on to the next generation, just as it was passed down to them, that keeps the industry alive – which is why, for all these decades until now, it has been widely accepted that farming requires distinctive treatment when it comes to inheritance tax.
What Labour really hates about the existence of family-owned farms, and the reason why it is senselessly moving to bring about their demise, is the fact that they epitomise a way of life that is anathema to Labour’s worldview.
Last week’s Budget has proven that Labour under Starmer has not shifted towards the centre, but has instead managed to disguise the reality of its radical left-wing agenda.
Yet the plan to abolish inheritance tax relief on farmland differs from the other announcements in the Budget in that its consequences, far from being solely economic, will be more profoundly environmental and cultural. Attempts to reduce the discussion to a mere issue of finance avoids what is fundamentally at stake: whilst claiming to “fix the foundations”, what Labour is actually doing is to erode one of the foundational pillars upon which life in rural England is built.
These foundations are in part economic, yes, but they also form the backbone of a stable way of life that has been established for generations. To intentionally put that at risk is not only tasteless, but grasping and vindictive.
Yet, even following last week’s devasting blow for farmers – and for lovers of the countryside nationwide – too many remain in the dark about the reality of the Government’s intentions.
Conservatives of all stripes now need to wake up and recognise Labour’s attack on rural England for what it is: an ideological project aimed at dismantling England’s rural environment and communities, and with it, the principal seat of conservatism in Britain.
