Although it is fashionable to assume that Labour’s attack on farmers is just class warfare against evil landowners (even those who work all day to provide food for the nation) , it hides a different objective.

Sir Keir Starmer actually believes in Ed Miliband’s impossible plan to free the UK’s national grid of all fossil fuels by 2030 – which means a mad rush to develop solar power.

Nearly 150 solar “farms” are currently under development, but Miliband wants countless more, to make the UK – in the slogan endlessly repeated by him, Starmer and Steve Reed, the secretary of state responsible for of agriculture – “a clean energy superpower”.

In this context, agriculture is, well, dirty.

It also explains why, in a less high-profile Budget move than Rachel Reeves’ proposal to end the inheritance tax exemption on farms worth more than £1m, the Chancellor said that it would continue to impose a “carbon tax”, among other things. other products, fertilizers from 2027.

Reeves is doing this at a speed unmatched in the EU, putting our farmers at a disadvantage.

Sir Keir Starmer actually believes in Ed Miliband’s impossible plan (pictured in February) to make Britain’s national grid free of all fossil fuels by 2030.

Nearly 150 solar ‘farms’ are currently in development, but Miliband wants countless more (pictured: wind farms in Scotland)

Stingy

David Walston, owner of Thriplow Farm near Cambridge, warned: “This means we will produce less food. We’re not going to eat less food, so we’re just going to import it from a country that doesn’t tax fertilizer.

So this is another reason why landowners, even reluctantly, are orienting their fields towards “renewable energy”. Obviously, some will enjoy the benefits they can get, even if there is no pride or passion that comes from growing food rather than kilowatts.

The Countryside Alliance, even before the election, warned that “farmers have been threatened with eviction so that their land can be used for solar energy”. In this sense, the workers are on the side of the most greedy landowners and against the sharecroppers.

The chair of the Countryside Alliance is actually a Labor peer, Baroness (Ann) Mallalieu. Last week she furiously declared: “Before the election, Steve Reed went around to farm organizations telling them that such changes to inheritance were not even being considered. He said it was absurd and gave us assurance.

Starmer himself addressed the 2023 National Farmers Union conference and told them he understood: “Losing a farm is not like losing another business. It can’t come back.

Yes, these solar “farms” will not be temporary, especially with profitability guaranteed under the terms Labor are offering them (paid for by us on our energy bills, of course).

This is a grotesque and extravagant use of land for electricity production, and not just because it produces no energy when the sun is not shining (in this regard, trading food security for so-called energy security is not an equation in the national system). service).

Keir Starmer himself addressed the 2023 National Farmers Union conference and told them he understood: “Losing a farm is not like losing another business. It can’t come back.

As Conservative MP Greg Smith pointed out in a House of Commons debate on the issue last month: “We need 2,000 acres of solar panels to produce enough electricity to power 50,000 homes: for a small modular (nuclear) reactor we need the space of two footballs.” locations and it will produce enough electricity to power a million homes.

But Ed Miliband is doing nothing to accelerate this carbon-free technology because it is not “renewable”.

As I said, this shift from land for food to land for kilowatts is strategic and not coincidental. This phenomenon – and its implications for property owners’ tax planning – was spotted by law firm Pinsent Masons in its post-Budget commentary.

She sent a note to clients: “Historically, farmers have been reluctant to grant leases for renewable development because the land is considered to be transferred off the farm and as such will lose tax relief. inheritance tax.

“However, following the changes announced in the Budget, landowners will now have a much greater incentive to consider leasing land to renewable energy developers as a way of funding new sources of income to offset losses.

“It could also trigger more farmland sales, meaning more land would become available for different uses.”

This too would fit with the Labor government’s strategic aim of speeding up housing construction in the countryside (which is not in itself an ignoble aim).

Devastated

But what makes our countryside attractive is being wasted by the indiscriminate spread of solar farms (which explains why Ed Miliband is imposing their development against the wishes of local populations and municipalities).

As Jacqueline Wright told the Sunday Times last year after building a solar farm next to her family’s “dream home” in the Worcestershire countryside: “There were just green fields , livestock and crops. Now it’s just solar panels – a sea of ​​gray.

I know that farms are not necessarily things of beauty – they themselves are focused on production and not tourism.

But the idea of ​​transforming vast swaths of what we still nostalgically call our green and pleasant land into electrically buzzing gray and black vistas: well, that’s not what most people would consider “saving our environment”.

Yet this is the reason given by the Labor government for advocating this transformation of the landscape.

Shame on the farmers, though, who can’t believe how badly they’ve been duped by Keir Starmer’s promises.

Don’t use pets in the assisted dying debate

Esther Rantzen and Kim Leadbeater (the proponent of the “assisted dying bill”) constantly state that they only want for humans what we already do for “our pets.”

This has always struck me as a grim analogy, since our pets are not consulted about their termination. And the inquest into a veterinarian’s suicide last week revealed something more.

Dr. John Ellis had been deeply distressed by the way he had “destroyed” animals at the behest of their owners, who said they could not afford the treatment he believed to be in the creatures’ best interests. Veterinarians have long had a term for this: convenience euthanasia.

A report from Sainsbury’s Finance found that more than half of vets had put down a dog or cat in the previous five years because “the owners could not afford to treat them”.

The private member’s bill was proposed by Labor MP Kim Leadbeater (pictured)

You would have to be very naive not to see a link between this and the pressures on families from the colossally high costs of care homes for disabled elderly people, if assisted dying were to become law.

Do we really think that relatives wouldn’t subtly suggest a certain option to Grandma, or that she wouldn’t feel under moral pressure to take the cheaper route of a quick exit?

As Barbara Rich says: “Those who are captivated by sentimental comparisons to animals have not even begun to acknowledge the existence of these problems, let alone offer answers. »

By the way, Ms. Rich is a leading wills and estates attorney. MPs should heed his warning.