Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has slapped down a former senior adviser to Tony Blair who told GB News last night that farming is “an industry we could do without”.
John McTernan welcomed a change in the Budget that will increase the inheritance tax threshold for farmers and said: “This is a change clamping down on tax avoidance.
“Farmers still get a privileged status for their farms and for me personally, I’m in favour of doing what Margaret Thatcher did to the miners.”
He added: “It’s an industry we could do without.”
Patrick Christys said: “So you would do to farmers what Margaret Thatcher did to the miners which was use heavy-handed police tactics, followed by putting them out of business?”
McTernan replied: “If people are so upset that they want to go in the streets and spray slurry on them, then we don’t need the small farmers.”
His comments were disowned today by the PM at the COP29 climate change conference in Baku in Azerbaijan.
Asked by GB News’ Christopher Hope if he agreed with McTernan’s comments, Starmer said: “No, I totally disagree. I'm absolutely committed to supporting our farmers.
“I said that before the election, and I say it after the election.
“That is why, in our budget last week, I was very pleased that we're investing £5 billion of our budget over the next two years into farming that is really important for our farmers, and I will do everything I can to support them.
“I think it's essential that they not only prosper but prosper well into the future. So I totally disagree with those comments.”
In a discussion on GB News, Exmoor farmer James Wright said of McTernan’s comments: “Clearly he said the quiet part out loud. This was their plan all along.
“Although they made commitments before the election not to do exactly what they've done, they seem very happy to throw family farming to the wolves.
“It feels very much like a war against the countryside, a war against rural people, rather than sound governance.”
He added: “They've done the sums wrong. They think a million pounds is a large farm. It's not.
“This is a 160-acre farm. We're well below the size of average, but well above the threshold at which we'll pay tax.
“And simply, as long as I live, we will not earn enough from this farm to pay that death duty...this will become a family tragedy tax.
“You'll have someone like [neighbouring farmer] Ollie and I in our early 30s, who all of a sudden die in their 40s, and the young children, the family will have to sell the farm.
“This is not this is not about protecting the countryside, not about building a better Britain. This is a war on rural people.”
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