Farage ruined farming – so why do some farmers want him at their protests?

He is the man who told farmers they would be better off out of the EU, and then backed the terrible trade deals with New Zealand and Australia that undercut them. And now, just as he poses for photos among the tractors, he is also lending his support to a trade deal with the US that would undermine the economics of the British agricultural industry and our food standards too. It would also make British food exports to the EU even more difficult. 

But never mind all that – the former public schoolboy, City wideboy, international metal trader and lobbyist for gold bullion sale has bought himself a Barbour jacket, a cashmere scarf and a flat cap and is ready to appear on camera to talk about how it’s all Keir Starmer’s fault.

Not all farmers are happy about this. Some think Farage is a phoney; others realise that he is such a divisive figure that he is distracting from their campaign to prevent the introduction of a 20% inheritance tax on farms worth £1 million or more. 

I want to put my cards on the table about this story. I can see no economic or rational reason why farms should be exempt from inheritance tax at all. In fact, since the price of farmland is, to a large extent, determined by its attractiveness as a tax dodge for millionaires, taxing it will close an unjustifiable tax break, cut down on wealthy tax avoiders with no real interest in farming and bring down the price of land and therefore the cost of food.  But worried farmers don’t see it that way

If you want to campaign against IHT on farmland or anything else for that matter, a coordinated and united front is the first obvious thing to have. Yet the farmers are split between the NFU, the Countryside Alliance, the pro-EU Save British Farming, and Farmers to Action, among others. 

Farage is welcome at rallies held by Farmers to Action but not Save British Farming, whose head Liz Webster has no time at all for the absentee MP for Clacton and who tells me: “The problem with Reform is that they want to hijack farming as part of their political agenda.” 

That agenda includes stabbing British farmers in the back. Any Trump trade deal would involve access to the UK for American food, with its much lower standards, chlorine-washed chicken, hormone beef, huge subsidies and massive scale of production. British farming would be destroyed, and Nigel would be to blame. 

Liz Webster thinks if most farmers thought about it, they wouldn’t have Farage anywhere near their campaign. She says: “I remind people he wants to put America first and there is no way British farming would survive a deal with America, then South America would be knocking on the door. 

“Just because Nigel is trying to make hay out of farming, some farmers go ‘oh look, there’s someone famous’. If most farmers thought about it they would find they are not in agreement with him, he is just a celebrity.” 

So divisive is the Reform leader that he was not invited to last week’s massive tractor rally at Westminster, and in the past several farmers have threatened to frogmarch him away from any protests they were part of. Instead, he had to get his media attention by attending another, earlier rally in Mill Hill, on the very edge of London (organised by Farmers to Action).

There, Farage called on his audience to protest peacefully – not that anyone seems to be suggesting that they had thought of doing anything else. He also called for a radical solution to the issue by abolishing inheritance tax for everyone. Although where the government might find the £8 billion a year it raises in tax was not mentioned –  even cutting all farm subsidies to zero would only save £3 billion a year. 

But the furore about Farage hides a bigger problem for the farming industry. The divisions within it that his presence has exposed make it easier for governments of any colour to divide and rule. 

The NFU, derided by many farmers as “more of a think tank than a lobby group” seems more willing to negotiate and possibly compromise on IHT. It claims that Keir Starmer “must pause and consult as a matter of urgency” about the introduction of inheritance tax, which is not exactly ‘die in the last ditch’ rhetoric. 

This realism might have something to do with the fact that only last year Farmers Weekly published an article on who owns what land in the UK, which rather gives the game away. This found that fully one third of all land was still owned by the aristocracy – and that is almost certainly a massive underestimate as only land that is sold has to be declared to the Land Registry. Aristocratic estates which have not changed hands in centuries probably make up most of the 17% of land that is not registered. 

After the landed gentry come the large corporations, which own 18% of our land. Many of which have invested in land for tax-saving purposes. They are followed by tycoons like James Dyson, who own 17% of the land often for similar reasons. 

It all helps to explain why one third of all farmers are tenants – they don’t own the farms, they pay rent on them. Rent they often pay to very large corporations, the ultra-wealthy and the aristocracy who not only get the rent but avoid billions in inheritance tax too. 

Even so, Amanda Watson, a livestock farmer from Yorkshire who is a former NFU ambassador and now sits on its national livestock board, warns: “If you start to tax estates heavily then tenants will be in a difficult position, [large landowners] won’t want long-term tenants because they cannot sell the land with a sitting tenancy… it is the tenants who will suffer.”

I understand the fear, but it is rather difficult to believe that you can’t find a way to tax multi-millionaires while protecting family farms. Meanwhile, like many other farmers Amanda has little time for Nigel Farage. She was in London for that Westminster demonstration last week and says of Reform’s leader: “He is a bit wacky, a bit out there, he says things that benefit himself a lot.”

Having the publicity-seeking faux farmer Farage turn up to your rallies to urge the very industry he has done more than almost anyone else to betray to go down fighting is not helpful. Not if you are hoping to persuade the government to cut a deal, perhaps by getting the chancellor to raise the threshold on IHT, so that only those with several million pounds worth of farmland start paying it. 

“I have listened, and I will protect family farms but not the tax breaks for corporations, tycoons and landed aristocracy,” might be enough for the NFU and the government, if not for Nigel. 

A man who is always keen to get someone else to fight to the death in the last ditch, while he pops down the pub.