Labour has missed one of its last remaining opportunities to repair its relationship with the countryside - Sarah Todd
Labour has missed one of its last remaining opportunities to repair its relationship with the countryside. It’s ever so sad that it was our Chancellor of the Exchequer - who spent time as a lad living on the North York Moors - who failed to grasp the nettle.
The young man in question, John Healey, even had one of those now almost extinct things - a teenage job.
Yes, he potwashed at the Milburn Arms in Rosedale, something that was possible because back then there were not mountains of red tape to tackle and the law didn’t rule that youngsters got paid a business bankrupting amount.
He would know farming families up there and be aware of the interdependent threads running through the patchwork of country life. Gamekeepers, girl grooms, gardeners, foresters, farriers, tractor drivers, butchers, blacksmiths and all-round bodgers. He would know about the lack of public transport and how homes were heated with oil boilers (no gas), coal fires and logs. He’d know places that even now struggle to get a good mobile or internet signal.
But, he has turned his back on all of them and this week delivered a Budget that completely failed to reset his party’s relationship with the countryside. Tories had taken the rural vote for granted, but then a bomb was put under it with the family farm tax seeing tens of thousands trundle down to our nation’s capital in their tractors to protest.
Seems like the incumbent of Number 11 Downing Street took his education at a private sixth form - fancy being able to afford that now with the politics of envy fees death knell his crimplene clad predecessor imposed? - and disappeared to the bright lights of Westminster via Cambridge University, forgetting all about the country bumpkins he’d grown up among.
As a side meander, while enjoying that education at St Peter’s in York he would be mixing among pupils from country villages such as Linton-on-Ouse, home to the former military base where his colleagues are now considering housing up to 1,200 asylum seekers.
But anyway, he made no mention of such challenges being faced by rural areas and failed - despite eyelash fluttering hints from his boss - to address the knife in the back of the family farm tax.
Yes, token gestures regarding fertiliser and red diesel were made, but no actual words of support for rural residents.
It’s not just about those sowing and mowing on our green and pleasant lands. Rural areas are also plagued with vape shops, drug problems, housing shortages, rubbish roads and lack of access to doctors and other health services.
After watching the budget on television your correspondent nipped into the local market town and the supermarket shelves sadly offered no choice but pork from Germany, lamb from New Zealand and beef from over the Irish Sea.
The benefits brigade was out in force. An idle army kitted out in elasticated waistbands, dragging along more kids than most working people could so much as dream about. They weren’t wasting any time worrying about the budget or looking at prices and labels.
Grab and go, leaving those of us in the squeezed middle peering at prices per pound while worrying about the miserable lives of pigs kept in cages. There was chicken and it was British, but it looked insipid. Grown too big too quick, presumably to compete with cheap imports from the likes of China, Brazil and Thailand.
It’s enough to really ruffle the old feathers and we ended up having salmon for tea, which takes some saying as a beef farmer’s daughter.
People will be writing in, probably the move-to-the-country lot who can be just as annoying with their dogs-off-leads as the benefits brotherhood.
Well, what with deadlines to meet and the cost of diesel - we don’t all have electric cars because we need our old vehicles to take sheep to market and suchlike - independent shops can be a luxury.
Those of us lacking bank balances buffeted by southern property sales or public sector pensions, don’t have funds for bespoke buying and try to do all our jobs in one trip.
We may be living in houses highly ranked in the council tax bands, but don’t be fooled, our kitchens and carpets could well be pushing half a century old.
But back to that shopping trip. Ten miles to buy sheep mineral licks, collect the paper and a prescription, along with grabbing a few provisions. In mitigation, it was too late to catch the butcher or baker.
Thinking about bread, UK cereal farmers make an average profit of less than a penny on a standard supermarket loaf of bread.
With ever more acres of farmland set to be covered with solar panels or housing developments, these are frightening times. Add into the mix threats to national security and surely securing food supplies should be our country’s priority.
This lefty lot wants growth in every postcode. To do that they need to remember where the barley in their man-of-the-people pint (the farmer gets about two pence, the landlord 12 to 23 pence and the rest goes on tax, wages etc) comes from and wise up to the fact that over 90 per cent of the pork used in the scratchings they munch while appearing on television shows - such as the other week’s Celebrity Gogglebox –originates from foreign climes.
What a pig’s ear.
Sarah Todd is a journalist specialising in farming and country life. Read her weekly column in Wednesday’s edition of The Yorkshire Post.