Starmer the farmer harmer should stop in his tracks

Rural life may seem a world away, but what happens there matters here

- Melanie McDonagh

For Londoners whose only contact with the countryside is the Diddly Squat range of Jeremy Clarkson products in the Amazon grocery store, the arrival of lots of tractors in Whitehall this week driven by actual farmers must have been alarming. I say to them: do not worry - they come in peace; they mean no harm.

They wear wellingtons and weatherproofed jackets habitually; the photogenic girl farmers with lambs (well, teenage sheep) are lovely.

And to single young women in the protest area, may I point out that some of these farmers are bachelors from places where the male to female ratio is the opposite of London's and they were probably hanging around in bars following the demonstration. Just saying.

They're angry, not with us but with the Government, on account of the imposition of 20 per cent inheritance tax on farms which were formerly free of it. Minette Batters, the formidable former head of the National Farmers' Union, the NFU, pointed out that last year Sir Keir Starmer addressed the farmers to explain that once a family farm is gone, it's not coming back. Quite so, Sir Keir. And how, exactly, has that changed since you won the election? The farmers were promised last year by Environment Secretary Steve Reed that there wouldn't be inheritance tax on farms; those who voted Labour feel like suckers.

They join those business owners who were also promised a benign pro-business regime and were unpleasantly surprised by the increase in employers' National Insurance contributions. Four months into government, and Labour's broad coalition is looking like a one-term phenomenon.

We need more farms