The last thing farmers need is a Clarkson and co cosplay

From early morning, they started gathering outside parliament in smart Barbour jackets, flat caps and spotless wellies. Not the farmers – they came later in proper warm clothing that had seen rain before – but the shadow cabinet, looking like a class of 10-year-olds marking World Book Day as the cast of The Sheep-Pig.

- JOE MURPHY

Shadow environment secretary Victoria Atkins didn’t seem to have seen the weather report, turning up in a union jack blazer. Vying with her to parade their countryside-loving credentials in green apparel were Nigel Farage and Ed Davey. Even Keir Starmer tried to join in from his latest overseas summit, boasting of a “rural upbringing” and a childhood job picking strawberries.

It was the day the countryside returned en masse to Westminster for the first time since the vast Countryside Alliance march 20 years ago. Men and women, dogs and a lot of children all protesting at Rachel Reeves’s inheritance tax raid. “He is why I’m here,” said arable farmer Richard Jones, from Gloucestershire, pointing to his 14-year-old son Will who hopes to inherit their acres. It wasn’t the 40,000-strong horde that some had predicted but they filled Whitehall to the brim and most of Parliament Square.

When French farmers protested outside the European parliament this year, they dumped tons of manure on the roads outside. Our British farmers are a more genteel breed. The only ordure left at the gates of the House of Commons was dropped by a Met Police horse that got spooked by a passing tractor.