
Farmers warn government they ‘won't back down' as thousands fill London for Pancake Day Rally
Thousands of farmers descended on central London for a ' Pancake Day rally', where they vowed that they would not stop protesting against the government's inheritance tax policy.
The largely good-natured demonstration on Tuesday turned angrier as the protestors - following behind a large green combine harvester as songs blasted from a loudspeaker - passed the Houses of Parliament, with crowds chanting: 'We won't back down.'
It was the fourth time in four months that farmers have flocked to Westminster to protest against the Labour government's plans to introduce a 20 per cent inheritance tax rate on farms worth more than £1m - bringing to an end the previous 100 per cent tax exemption on all family farms that had been passed down.
But after hundreds of tractors filled up the Whitehall in previous rallies, protestors were ordered by Metropolitan Police not to bring any unauthorised vehicles or risk facing arrest. Seven farming vehicles were permitted.
Pancakes were a hot topic at the Shrove Tuesday rally, with protestors making clear on their placards that there can be no pancakes without British farmers.
Speaking from on top of a combine harvester, shortly after a farmer had been throwing pancakes into the crowd, National Farmers' Union president Tom Bradshaw said farmers 'will not go away'.
Significant anger was directed towards the Labour government, with chancellor Rachel Reeves the subject of numerous angry placards.
The government has refused to budge on the policy despite calls to U-turn from farmers and opposition MPs. After a petition calling for the move to be scrapped reached more than 150,000 signatures, the government said there was an 'urgent need to repair the public finances in as fair a way as possible' and the 'reform of the reliefs strikes the right balance'.
Elizabeth Hilliard, 64, the editor of a gardening magazine, said: 'Obviously they hate farmers. I think the political elites just sneer at ordinary people, and they claim that they're ill informed, uneducated, stupid. They're the opposite, absolute salt of the earth.'
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch told The Independent it was 'absolutely heartbreaking' to see the impact of the policy on farmers' livelihoods, and demanded that the government reverse the policy.
Victoria Atkins, the shadow environment minister, described it as a 'dreadful, vindictive' policy which will 'break family farming as we know it'.
She added: 'Families are having conversations about whether the family can afford for [their] elderly relative to live beyond April 2026, because if they live past that date, that means that their family will get hit with a ginormous inheritance tax bill.'
Emma, 48, said she has heard of elderly farmers who would prefer to die now than wait until inheritance tax changes come into force in April 2026.
'We're already hearing of people that have already taken their own life because of the situation,' said the farmer from Staffordshire, whose father passed the farm to her mother when he passed away five years ago.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and other Conservative politicians were among those who attended Tuesday's rally.
The Government says that the actual threshold before paying inheritance tax could be as much as £3 million, once exemptions for each partner in a couple and for the farm property are taken into account.
Downing Street has repeatedly said it is 'confident' that the majority of farms will not be affected by the reforms, with Treasury estimates finding that some 27 per cent of estates claiming agricultural property relief (APR) were above the £1 million threshold in 2021/2022.
This would mean that three-quarters of farms would not see their tax hiked and the changes would see around 500 estates pay inheritance tax per year, Treasury estimates found.
On Monday, a third Labour MP came out to publicly oppose the measure. Speaking to The Times, Mid and South Pembrokeshire MP Henry Tufnell said it is 'embarrassing to say you're going to do one thing and then do another'.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Telegraph
10 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Ed Miliband's nuclear golden era could soon become a new dark age
This Government is fond of making grandiose claims for things that are yet to happen. The latest is Ed Miliband's declaration that we are in 'a golden era of nuclear power.' He has made a series of announcements that may or may not come to fruition over the next two decades, including a new nuclear plant at Sizewell with £14 billion of public money behind it. But Mr Miliband is getting well ahead of himself. History shows that few public policies of modern times have been more mishandled. Britain once led the world in nuclear energy and it was very much a cross-party venture. The post-war Attlee government established the Atomic Energy Research Establishment and the first ever commercial nuclear reactor was built at Calder Hall under the Tories in 1956 just as the Suez crisis increased concerns over the supply of oil. British nuclear expertise was second to none and sought around the world. Under both Conservative and Labour administrations, the UK became a leader in nuclear power development, commencing operations on 26 Magnox reactors between 1956 and 1971. The technology chopped and changed, moving from advanced gas-cooled reactors (AGRs) in the 1970s to pressurised water reactors (PWRs) and even a fast-breeder reactor experiment at Dounreay in Scotland, opened amid great fanfare by Margaret Thatcher but which has now closed. Her government set in train a plan for eight new PWRs, only one of which – Sizewell B – was ever built. What happened? One answer is North Sea oil and gas. Fears about fuel scarcity and sky high prices abated as more came ashore. Cheap gas made the cost of nuclear look prohibitive to politicians fixated only on the short term. Meanwhile, across the Channel, the French, with no oil and depleted coal reserves, invested instead in nuclear power. By 1979 they had installed 56 reactors, satisfying their power needs and even exporting electricity to other European countries, including us. The French are even going to be building Sizewell C. They produce 70 per cent of their electricity by nuclear fission, which does not emit CO2, and are not dependent on energy from volatile regions like the Gulf or despotic regimes like Russia. This serendipity was as much a function of force majeure as foresight. As the French said 'no oil, no gas, no coal, no choice'. As a result they have found themselves in a better position than Britain in the switch to low carbon renewables. Because of the apparent bonanza provided by North Sea oil, we neglected the one source of power that would help create self-sufficiency and meet climate change objectives. Only when it was too late and much of the industry's expertise had been lost did the last Labour government try to reactivate the nuclear programme. Ironically, it was Mr Miliband as Environment Secretary who revived the programme 15 years ago in the teeth of objections from Labour 'greens'. Yet only one new reactor at Hinkley Point – using French technology and, to begin with, Chinese finance – has been given the go ahead. It is way behind schedule by at least six years and massively over budget. For all the trumpet-blowing is the new Sizewell announcement just another milestone along a road paved with good intentions and wretched decision-making? We know it will be hugely expensive and the idea of it coming on stream within 10 years is for the birds. Since it is a copy of Hinkley it should benefit by learning from the mistakes made there. But few can have confidence in the project meeting any of its financial targets or the timetable for construction because nothing in this country ever does. Around the world there is a boom in nuclear power building as countries see it as an essential complement to wind and solar, not least because it provides a baseload and is not dependent on the weather. Sixty reactors are being built globally – 30 of them in China, which has also opened a thorium plant, something we could have done years ago since we have plentiful supplies and the process reduces waste. Is there any area in which the UK can press ahead? Tucked away in his Telegraph article this week, Miliband says the Government is ramping up spending on nuclear fusion research, though this seems more a token mention than an enthusiastic embrace. Yet fusion is one area where the British do have a great deal of expertise, with start-up companies well ahead of any European competitors in raising investment. It is always said that fusion is the future that never arrives because it involves replicating the same processes seen on the Sun. About 35 years ago two chemists shocked the world by claiming they had come up with 'cold fusion' obviating the need to produce the excessive temperatures needed. But the science was flawed, even though some adherents still think cold fusion is possible. Fusion technology is advancing rapidly and is likely to accelerate with the help of AI, high temperature superconducting magnets and supercomputers. But those in the business fear the Government is making the same mistakes as its predecessors in failing to measure the long-term in decades, not parliamentary sessions. China, Japan and America are now in the vanguard of a technology in which the UK once led, as it did with nuclear fission. Arguably, the most important aspect of Miliband's plan is the green light for a fleet of small modular reactors (SMRs), though getting planning agreements past local communities will be hard. Even this has been fraught with bureaucracy and delay. A competition to find a developer for SMRs has taken two years before alighting on Rolls Royce. Why has it taken so long? The potential offered by SMRs was identified years ago; yet once again, government dithering has led to everything being done when it is too late to fill the energy gap that will threaten black-outs in a few years' time. This is because the switch to renewables, the ban on new North Sea extraction licences and the demise of coal will make the decommissioning of existing nuclear power stations even more problematic before new ones come on stream. How long before Mr Miliband's golden era turns into a dark age?


The Guardian
11 minutes ago
- The Guardian
A nuanced approach to ageing, sex and gender
Born in 1976, I am around the same age as Susanna Rustin and the generation of 'middle-aged, gender-critical women' who believe that their biological sex should underpin and define their rights (Why is there such a generational divide in views on sex and gender in Britain?, 5 June). I am not one of those people. Forty-nine years' experience of living in a female body in a world deformed by class, caste and economic and racial inequality – never mind environmental destruction – has only made me wonder quite why it matters so much to some people. A truly progressive society should be moving towards seeing the person first, both beyond and in profound recognition of their politicised identities. One can see biological sex as both fundamental and immaterial at the same time. As I approach 50, it's clear to me that it's possible to hold both these thoughts simultaneously. My menopausal womanhood matters as it gets in the way of things I want to do in life. But there's no way it matters to me above all else, and there's no chance it gets in the way to a greater degree than the various effects of social and economic inequality. It is a fallacy to suggest that trans inclusivity is more compatible with capitalism than with collective liberation. If the Progress Pride flag is flown from a corporate building – a rare sight in my experience compared with the rainbow Pride flag – it's not because it 'suits them', in Rustin's words, to shift attention away from class politics towards individual expression. Perhaps younger people better understand that corporate interests don't engage with class politics anyway, so how's a flag going to hurt anyone? I was born with breasts and ovaries, and still have them; I have given birth twice. These facts have had undeniable effects on my life – but so has the disadvantage of my class of birth and the continuing advantage of my whiteness. If I were to look at every aspect of my life through the prism of my reproductive organs, I would be limiting the possibilities of looking at the multiple effects of all those factors in the whole – the effects of which can only lead one to conclude that they are human, a person, first. It's called intersectionality, and that term was come up with by Kimberlé Crenshaw, who was born in 1959. Lynsey HanleyLiverpool Susanna Rustin lists several possibilities for why gen Z are more likely to advocate for the inclusion of transgender women in single-sex spaces. One thing she did not mention is that it may be due to the personal relationships that this demographic is more likely to have with transgender individuals, and how much more easily it is to sympathise with the struggles of those we know. As an older member of gen Z, I have had two openly trans peers in my cohort during my time at university, my former neighbour was transgender, and now in my workplace I have a transgender colleague. This resembles the norm – a Guardian article from June 2022 suggests that 50% of British gen Zers said they knew at least one transgender person. I would argue that gen Z more openly fights for the inclusion and protections of transgender women because we're more likely to see them as truly women, rather than 'self-identifying' individuals, due to our personal connections with them. To me, my trans female colleague would intrude on my bodily privacy the same amount as my cis female colleague would. As always, I implore others to seek out the voices and stories of transgender people if knowing them personally may be outside your generational demographic, so we can better empathise with this often scapegoated BarkerCamelford, Cornwall Thank you for such a well-written and clearly argued article by Susanna Rustin. I am pleased to see the Guardian publishing this piece. It is very important to be able to speak openly about these important issues and engage in frank but respectful debate. I completely agree with the author and would also add that with age comes experience, a certain weariness, a generally more nuanced outlook on life and a deep understanding of how embodied our experiences are but also anger – anger that hard-won women's rights, protections, dignity and safety can be so easily dismissed by so-called and address supplied Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.


The Guardian
11 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Trust no one when it comes to ID cards
Polly Toynbee posits a world in which everyone has a smartphone and all government agencies can be trusted (Digital ID cards would be good for Britain – and a secret weapon for Labour against Reform, 9 June). What colour is the sky in this world?Linda MockettWinnersh, Berkshire Am I the only one thinking about Sellafield and wondering by what stretch of the imagination nuclear power can be called 'clean' (Sizewell C power station to be built as part of UK's £14bn nuclear investment, 10 June)?Dr Nigel MellorNewcastle upon Tyne This year, I received my 50 years' service badge from Aslef – a couple of years late, but we are train drivers, after all. During my career, I always 'worked on the railway', never on the trains (Letters, 8 June). Malcolm SimpsonSalisbury, Wiltshire So is an airport a plane station or a runway station?Colin ProwerChipping Norton, Oxfordshire I am sick of hearing calls to raise the price of alcoholic beverages (Letters, 8 June). This would have little or no effect on the middle and upper classes, but would punish those on lower incomes. What next? A rise in food prices to deal with the obesity problem?Noel HannonLondon Damned bold of Dave Schilling to assume Elon Musk and Donald Trump ever had anything like friendship, as opposed to plans to exploit each other (Male friendship isn't easy. Just ask Trump and Musk, 7 June).Brandi WeedWoodland, California, US Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.