Getty ImagesThe government is preparing to face the biggest protest yet over its domestic policy agenda since Labour won the general election.It is the week where farmers are heading for Westminster – and bringing some noisy and influential friends with them.Among those expected outside Parliament on Tuesday is the country’s most well known but relatively new-ish farmer, Jeremy Clarkson.Guesswork about how many people will turn up at a protest before it has happened is exactly that, guesswork, but some reckon it could be between 10,000 and 40,000 people.Nearly three weeks on from the Budget, when the plan to charge some farms inheritance tax was first announced, the anger seems to be growing, rather than easing.There is a huge row about precisely how many people might be affected.BBC Verify had a go here at working its way through the numbers.But beneath that is a simmering anger about ministers’ perceived ignorance about the countryside – and a sense from many farmers of being persistently let down, by this government and its predecessors.Indeed, speaking on The Westminster Hour on BBC Radio 4, Baroness Mallalieu, a Labour peer and the president of the Countryside Alliance, said the government’s changes to inheritance tax relief “smell of incompetence” and that a “large part of our party has become urban… divorced from a big section of the community”.Two things strike me about all this: firstly, the absolute insistence from ministers from Sir Keir Starmer down that they are not going to change their minds.And secondly, the beginnings of a parallel, perhaps, with the rows Labour had with many in rural Britain the last time it was in power.Twenty-two years ago, around 400,000 people from across the country marched through central London to highlight the needs of rural communities. The initial source of anger then was the ban on fox hunting.Could this inheritance tax change prove equally totemic?As farmers head for Westminster, the prime minister has been heading for South America – he is at the G20 Summit of the world’s biggest economies in Brazil for the next few days.But the issue followed him into the skies of the south Atlantic, where he said he was “absolutely confident” that the “vast majority of farms and farmers” would not be affected by the changes.“It’s important for us to keep communicating how that works” he said.The truth is they have been trying to communicate how it would work ever since the Budget. I asked Sir Keir about it the day after – but the explanations have done little to dampen the anger.PA MediaAsked whether he accepted that farmers felt betrayed over the changes, Sir Keir said “it’s very important that we support farmers.”He then made an argument we can expect to hear the Environment Secretary Steve Reed and others make in the next few days, about the wider support the government insists it is offering farmers and the countryside.”We’ve put £5bn in the Budget for the next two years into farming. That is not to be overlooked. That is the single biggest sum of money in a Budget over a two-year period that has ever been put down in relation to farming. “On top of that, there’s £50m in relation to flooding, which is h …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnGetty ImagesThe government is preparing to face the biggest protest yet over its domestic policy agenda since Labour won the general election.It is the week where farmers are heading for Westminster – and bringing some noisy and influential friends with them.Among those expected outside Parliament on Tuesday is the country’s most well known but relatively new-ish farmer, Jeremy Clarkson.Guesswork about how many people will turn up at a protest before it has happened is exactly that, guesswork, but some reckon it could be between 10,000 and 40,000 people.Nearly three weeks on from the Budget, when the plan to charge some farms inheritance tax was first announced, the anger seems to be growing, rather than easing.There is a huge row about precisely how many people might be affected.BBC Verify had a go here at working its way through the numbers.But beneath that is a simmering anger about ministers’ perceived ignorance about the countryside – and a sense from many farmers of being persistently let down, by this government and its predecessors.Indeed, speaking on The Westminster Hour on BBC Radio 4, Baroness Mallalieu, a Labour peer and the president of the Countryside Alliance, said the government’s changes to inheritance tax relief “smell of incompetence” and that a “large part of our party has become urban… divorced from a big section of the community”.Two things strike me about all this: firstly, the absolute insistence from ministers from Sir Keir Starmer down that they are not going to change their minds.And secondly, the beginnings of a parallel, perhaps, with the rows Labour had with many in rural Britain the last time it was in power.Twenty-two years ago, around 400,000 people from across the country marched through central London to highlight the needs of rural communities. The initial source of anger then was the ban on fox hunting.Could this inheritance tax change prove equally totemic?As farmers head for Westminster, the prime minister has been heading for South America – he is at the G20 Summit of the world’s biggest economies in Brazil for the next few days.But the issue followed him into the skies of the south Atlantic, where he said he was “absolutely confident” that the “vast majority of farms and farmers” would not be affected by the changes.“It’s important for us to keep communicating how that works” he said.The truth is they have been trying to communicate how it would work ever since the Budget. I asked Sir Keir about it the day after – but the explanations have done little to dampen the anger.PA MediaAsked whether he accepted that farmers felt betrayed over the changes, Sir Keir said “it’s very important that we support farmers.”He then made an argument we can expect to hear the Environment Secretary Steve Reed and others make in the next few days, about the wider support the government insists it is offering farmers and the countryside.”We’ve put £5bn in the Budget for the next two years into farming. That is not to be overlooked. That is the single biggest sum of money in a Budget over a two-year period that has ever been put down in relation to farming. “On top of that, there’s £50m in relation to flooding, which is h …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
