The latest farmers’ protest in Westminster didn’t just bring 1,000 tractors – and a handful of tanks – to Whitehall on Monday. It also brought an eclectic soundtrack.
Usually it is the perennial anti-Brexit campaigner Steve Bray who aurally dominates Parliament Square – he has blasted Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, the European Union anthem, from a speaker most days for much of the past eight years.
On Monday it was the farmers’ turn, as they filled Westminster with their tractors’ ear-piercing air horns set to memorable ditties, part of a protest against new inheritance tax rules. Sandstorm, the quarter-century-old club trance classic by the Finnish DJ Darude, appears to be a firm favourite with British farmers. So is I’m a Barbie Girl and, apparently, Baby Shark.
The tractors started arriving in central London from early morning, driven overnight from as far away as Devon (more than 300km) and Cumbria (closer to 500km). They rolled around the centre of the city, crippling traffic, before assembling in lines stretching from Trafalgar Square all the way down to parliament. Many remained there all day until it got dark.
Farmers were determined to keep up the pressure on prime minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government, which in October’s budget announced that family farms worth more than £1 million (€1.2 million) would become liable for inheritance tax for the first time, at a rate of 20 per cent.
The UK government insists that most farms worth up to £3 million will escape the tax when existing loopholes are factored in, while it has also estimated that only about 500 farms annually will be affected when the new rules kick in from May 2026. Farmers and other rural advocacy groups, however, claim that tens of thousands of farms will be affected.
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The issue has been seized upon by the Conservatives, desperate to woo back rural voters who may have switched to Labour in last July’s election, and Reform UK, which is seeking to broaden its appeal beyond the urban working class to formerly Tory rural heartlands.
Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform, was prominent in his wax jacket and flat cap among the protesting farmers on Monday. He received a polite, if slightly reserved, reception from the protesters when he addressed them from the stage.
The reason for the reticence – anti-government protest crowds usually fawn over Farage – may have something to do with the fact that Monday’s demonstration was organised by a pressure group, Save British Farming, which was originally set up during Brexit to campaign against a hard Brexit – “No to No Deal” was one of its favourite slogans.
Farmers, many of whom miss the subsidies and export opportunities of the EU’s single market, are not necessarily Reform’s natural constituency. They fear the trade deals sought by Brexiteers will further disadvantage UK farmers.
Save British Farming’s founder, Wiltshire farmer and one-time Liberal Democrat candidate Liz Webster, was also previously involved with the anti-Brexit group Led By Donkeys. She once ploughed “Britain Now Wants to Remain” into one of her fields.
Starmer’s Labour has in recent weeks shown itself alive to the threat from Reform in working-class urban areas
Monday was the third big farmers’ protest in Westminster since the budget – the area has twice been crippled by tractors and, in November, 15,000 farmers also assembled for a rally. Yet economic disquiet among farmers and in rural communities has been brewing since long before the inheritance tax changes, and even since before Labour came to power. Save British Farming had its first tractor rally in 2020. It held another in March 2024, targeting the Tories then in charge.
The first speaker in Monday’s debate to raise concerns over the government’s rule change was Ben Goldsborough, who won South Norfolk for Labour last July with a majority of just 5.7 per cent, or 2,800 votes. Other Labour MPs to have expressed reservations include Markus Campbell Savours, an MP from Cumbria, and Matt Bishop, who represents Forest and Dean – his majority was just 39 votes.
Starmer’s Labour has in recent weeks shown itself alive to the threat from Reform in working-class urban areas; the government in recent days released videos showing deportations of illegal migrants, for example, touching on an issue that mattered to some working-class voters.
If the 100 or so Labour MPs representing rural or semirural constituencies get more nervous, pressure will rise on Starmer’s government to climb down on farm inheritance tax or to at least soften the blow with more loopholes.
