Guido hears rapid efforts are currently underway to organise gilet-jaune-style protests among disparate farming groups on the back of Reeves’ budget measures yesterday. Reeves went back on Labour’s pre-election promise and axed Agricultural Property Relief on Inheritance Tax, replacing it with a 50% rate of relief on assets worth over £1 million…
Back before the election when Labour was pretending to be low-tax the then Shadow Environment Secretary Steve Reed reassured the Country Land and Business Association conference: “We have no intention of changing APR.” He twice confirmed Labour wouldn’t alter the tax relief as the CLA’s president stressed it would “in a single swipe would take small farms out”…
One protest organiser tells Guido: “We haven’t seen this kind of anger in among farmers since the Countryside March.” Co-conspirators will remember the 400,000-strong rural protests back in 2002 which threatened to topple Blair…
Alongside an expected massive petition there are likely to be organised marches. One incensed farmer tells Guido:
“I look forward to bringing my tractor and other agricultural machinery to Whitehall, and maybe also to Labour’s conference in Liverpool next year. If Labour wants to close down family farming we’ll close down Labour first. They have lied through their teeth about supporting farmers and deserve to be held to account.”
Another tells Guido that this is “going to make food more expensive for everyone. Farming is already tough, and piling on these costs will force smaller farms out, which will mean fewer local options and higher prices at the store. People need to understand that when we struggle, the whole country feels it at the dinner table.” The CLA now estimates that capping APR at £1 million will affect 70,000 UK farms. The policy is predicted to have the effect of “damaging family businesses and destabilising food security.“ £1 million is low – huge farm conglomerates will be the only ones able to absorb the cost…
Rural sources say if farmers and the public get their act together we should expect to see “buckets full of sh*t getting dumped on parliament” before too long. Reeves may come to regret this one…
UPDATE: The NFU is organising a rally in Westminster for Tuesday 19th November.
Statement by Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers Limited, following Harry’s loss in court today:
“Prince Harry wrote a sad book which boasted about his killing of 25 Taliban, his drug-taking and, in cringe-making detail, how he lost his virginity. There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him, to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes, not just the biscuit, but the whole tin. Poor Harry. I feel sorry for the way a confused and angry young man has been drawn into this case. The bitter irony is that his mother, Diana, liked the Mail. We were her paper. We took her side in her acrimonious break up with Charles. She and I would speak and meet. The Mail’s superb royal reporter was her friend and confidante. The truth is that this trumped-up action – which has cost well over £50 million and wasted a huge amount of valuable court time – should never have been brought to trial. That it did, raises profoundly disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession. Today’s verdict is not just a victory for Associated’s magnificent journalists – several of whom have had a terrible toll imposed on their health and lives – but a free press generally. Make no mistake. This was a conspiracy, supported by Hacked Off, to destroy a paper. Financed by the orgy-loving, racist Max Mosley and involving the actor Hugh Grant, it was also a sinister bid to resuscitate Leveson Two and impose statutory regulation on the press which, even now, is rearing its ugly head in Labour’s Media Green Paper.”
