Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are morons who can't grasp farming economy basics (Image: Enterprise News and Pictures)

       Making light of life’s challenges doesn’t always solve the problem but it often dulls the pain. A nursery rhyme might fit the bill and lift the spirits a bit, don’t you think, Possums?

       The trouble is, Old MacDonald’s farm, along with thousands of others, isn’t going to have any cows, chickens, sheep, pigs or ducks soon thanks to the introduction of Labour Party taxation lunacy.

       Most sensible people who followed the unveiling of the Artful Dodger’s budget statement to the House of Commons on Wednesday last week might have absorbed its impact to a large extent. Indeed, it doesn’t require a detailed understanding of nuclear physics to appreciate the economic fallout that will almost inevitably follow over the coming months and years.

       Perhaps one of the most egregious aspects of this odious offering of delusional waffle was the manner in which our farmers were treated.

       How on earth does anyone gain from extending the mindless inheritance tax raid into agricultural holdings where any market value of the farm exceeding one million pounds is now to incur an inheritance tax liability? For what and to whom is this spiteful money grab beneficial? Simple answer: nothing and no-one.

       To add insult to injury, Dodger maintains the nation cannot afford to let all farmers continue passing on their estates without paying inheritance tax anyway. I don’t understand what

       that even means! More than ￡150 billion is spent on the NHS annually, which means the amount raised by the farming inheritance tax change would be spent by the health service in a little more than a day. Oh, you can afford inflation-busting public sector pay rises, you can can stifle what’s left of our industrial base with the new workers charter, but you cannot afford NOT to tax our agricultural landowners?

       Let’s also remember that farmers in the UK employing farm workers will now have to cough employer hikes in NI. Their families will also have to pay hefty death duties too when the current “crop” of agricultural landowners expire.For a country with a population just shy of seventy million people we are not self-sufficient in food production to meet our needs. We need to import massive amounts of food to feed our people, supplemented by ever-diminishing domestic production. How does taxing our farmers out of existence help promote financial stability, or even more crucially food security?

       Let’s consider some of the other things affecting our food needs, shall we? We don’t have primary access to our fish stocks for starters. And by “our” fish I mean fish that swim in our territorial waters. No, some bright spark thought it a good idea to give up 70% of our cod caught inside the 12-mile Channel limit to the French. He (or she) also had a brainwave in

       giving away 80% of the cod stocks found within the 12-mile limit around the Welsh and Scottish coasts too. What that means is we have to “import” much of our own cod from the EU to meet domestic demand. If you don’t believe that then check out the price of cod on the market. Fish and chips is a luxury now, not a cost-effective British fast-food meal of choice as in days gone by.

       Our food security is far from assured for all practical intents and purposes. How is anything remotely resembling common sense achieved by placing this country at the potential mercy of a bad actor holding us to ransom? Well, we already have an answer to why we've found ourselves subject to this idiocy……the EU! We were subject to a common agricultural policy whilst chained in vassalage and imprisoned in an emerging European super-state whilst still a member state of the EU. Since departing we are still bound to accommodate a quota system with something that belongs to us. Madness.

       According to a Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs United Kingdom Food Security Report 2021, updated 22 October 2024, agriculture in the UK uses 70% of the country's land area; it employs 1% of the UK workforce (462,000 people) and contributes 0.5% to GDP (￡13.7 billion). The UK currently produces about 60% of domestic food consumption. Agricultural activity occurs in almost all UK rural locations. Yet a combination of taxing farmers to extinction and covering vast swathes of our pristine countryside with wind turbines and banks of solar panels is a good idea? And let’s not forget Angela Rayner’s plan to build millions of houses on greenbelt land too. Is there some political masterplan afoot here somewhere?

       What a clumsy bunch of clueless morons this is. They are meddling with something about which they clearly know nothing.

       It says it all too when the Environment Secretary pitches up for a photo op wearing four hundred quid wellies (courtesy of Lord Alli, apparently) to do a “ramble”. Trekking around the countryside in expensive handmade Le Chameau, even if they were priced below the threshold for listing in the official register of interests, is appallingly crass.

       The title of that nursery rhyme was perhaps eerily prophetic…. “Old MacDonald HAD a Farm”, but no longer. Forced to sell up and cash in like thousands of others who cannot afford the eventual tax bill, he won’t or doesn’t HAVE a farm anymore.