Voting can be a poisoned chalice for farmers. Keir Starmer’s recent address to the National Farmers Union marked the first time that that a Labour leader had bothered to address the group since 2008. The Liberal Democrats alienated the bulk of their traditional rural support in record time thanks to their wholehearted embrace of unbridled wokery. And the Tories have overseen a significant decline in Britain’s agrarian self-sufficiency, from over 75% in the mid 1980’s to just 64% today.
The agricultural sector employs almost half a million workers in the UK, contributes some £9.9Billion in gross value added annually, and serves a strategic role in the good functioning of the nation. And yet there is no clear champion of the industry, perhaps because farmers are square pegs for round holes. They’re unionised and manual workers but sit on the opposite side of a cultural ravine to the Labour party; while often clad in tweed and keen for a hunt but deterred from voting Tory by their enthusiasm for free markets. So, who should farmers vote for?
I was surprised at the time of the last EU Parliamentary elections to learn that my local farmer had voted Change UK. “That’ll be who that one vote was,” I joked. “It was either that or Labour. Anyway, enough bollocks,” he replied in the usual style, as he sped away on his quad to tend his animals. While rural areas tended to vote for Brexit and the Tories, a great deal of farmers didn’t. Many in the farming community were, and still are, concerned about the consequences of Brexit. Uninterrupted trade with Europe is vital to their livelihoods, and they have legitimate concerns regarding the ramifications of the prospect of a free trade deal with the US.
They don’t want to be undercut by chlorinated chicken and hormone treated beef, and I sympathise because I don’t want to eat it either. Although the government has provided assurances on British food standards, a vote for the Tories is a vote for further divergence from Europe, and the inability of British suppliers to get their potatoes and tractors into Northern Ireland because they are tainted by British soil. Contravening ‘health import requirements’, may just be a teething problem – but it might also be a taste of things to come.
And let’s face it, the Conservative party’s neoliberal economic policies have left farmers behind. In my area, dozens of family-owned dairy farms have shut up shop over the past couple of decades, as production has been consolidated by a few mega milkers like Robert Wiseman. The demise of the local shop and the rise of the supermarket means the purchasing power that these corporations command has driven down the price of goods such as milk to the point where production can only be profitable at massive scale. Constant downward pressure on price is keenly felt by the labour force too – making the practice of importing some 80,000 fruit pickers to the UK necessary to prevent food rotting in the field.
The Liberal Democrats should be the obvious alternative. The Liberals have made a stronghold of the west country over the past century and more, but in 2021 the electoral map is a blinding sea of blue. The reluctance to vote for the Lib Dems is more cultural than economic: “Women’s lib is where it all went wrong,” farmer John tells me on another occasion – and he’s not an old man. It’s the sort of sentiment not uncommon in the average country pub, even though farmers’ wives and mothers often wield more influence and enjoy more liberation than many of their 9-5 contemporaries, or indeed their husbands.
Nevertheless, there is a strong sense of social conservatism within the community, which is heavily Christian and very ‘matter of fact’. The reality of manual work leaves little room for unreality of gender theory and the dismantling of the patriarchy. In seeking to consolidate support in inner-city areas and in university towns, the Liberal Democrats embraced a radical woke agenda which served to estrange them from their rural support.
In the north lots of voters opted for Brexit in spite of the alleged material cost – the punishment budget, the job losses, the projected collapse of GDP – because their social values and cultural priorities won out. With farmers a similar phenomenon occurred, but in reverse, as most withheld their votes from the Lib Dems and the prospect of Remain, which would serve their economic interest, because the party promising it threatened their cultural security and stood contrary to their societal values.
So, we turn to Labour – a party which hasn’t won the constituency in which the conversations recorded in this article took place, Taunton Deane, since 1945. Keir Starmer’s recent address to the NFU marks the first serious attempt to reach out by the party to farmers in over a decade. But the problem for Labour is that attempting to bridge the divide between urban centres and rural areas is simply a bridge too far.
A church can only be so broad. Starmer’s address was marked by a continuation of the party’s opposition to the badger cull, and a redoubling of support for the EU’s ban on neonicotinoids, both policies which run contrary to the interests of farmers. Instead of compromise, he chose to focus on the unoffensive topic of rural bus routes. His is the party that introduced the hunting ban, and which is home to the anti-shoot lobby; the culture clash is irreconcilable.
But there are material and economic divides too – the interests of the producer and of the consumer invariably diverge in many instances, which is why from the Americas to Albania political fault lines run through rural and urban areas as surely as they divide the young from the old. Without making serious concessions which threaten to upend Labour’s urban support, Labour’s offer to farmers remains unserious and performative.
One of the difficulties in presenting a package that will satisfy farmers is that they’re a diverse bunch. Some are working class, some are middle class, and some are aristocrats. But their economic status is bridged by their cultural connections: they drink in the same pubs and often frequent the same shoots. Unlike city workers, who more visibly divide between rooftop bars and Wetherspoons, the farming community more nimbly transcends the class divide.
And it’s culture that keeps them voting Tory. The Lib Dems are busy refocussing their might on the young and the woke. Labour’s olive branch belies the continuation of their business-as-usual approach, so afraid are they to alienate the last bastion of their electoral support. So, the Tories are the devil that farmers know – they can relate to the likes of Neil Parish and Jacob Rees Mogg far better than they can Ed Davey or Luke Pollard.
But like the Red Wall, who were left behind by Labour, farmers can find a new home too if they feel neglected – and it’s time for the Tories to step up and deliver a better settlement for British agriculture. Not just for their own electoral prospects, but for the good of farmers, and for the good of this very necessary and strategic industry upon which we all rely. It’s time for the Tories to earn farmers’ votes, end the complacency and get on with levelling up British agriculture.
