Labour's tractor tax shows they do not understand the countryside, says Sir Michael Morpurgo
Sir Michael Morpurgo has said Labour's family farm tax proves the party 'don't really understand what the countryside is about'.
The children's novelist, who has lived on a farm in the village of Iddesleigh, Dorset, for the past 50 years, said the Government's reforms on inheritance tax are 'completely wrong'.
Under new rules announced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves in the October Budget, agricultural assets worth more than £1 million, which were previously exempt, will be liable to the 20 per cent tax.
The announcement led to widespread protests from farming communities across the UK. More than 1,000 tractors pitched up at demonstrations outside Westminster.
Sir Michael, whose latest novel Spring is his first book for adults in almost 50 years, said of the reforms: 'You don't have a go at the pensioners and the farmers. I know because I live in the middle of the farming culture.'
He continued: 'To threaten one particular group seems to me to be completely wrong. It's done by people who are fundamentally urban, who don't really understand what the countryside is about.'
Sir Michael, 81, who is best known for books such as War Horse and The Butterfly Lion, also said Britain is full of sociological and geographical division.
'We exploit them,' he said. 'There is a massive division between town and country. It's understandable: it's part of having our industrial revolution earlier than other countries.
'If you go to Italy or France, where their industrial revolution came rather later, where they are more in contact with their food, with their farmers, it's different.
'When French farmers have a protest there is considerable support among urban people.'
Despite the policy, Sir Michael declared himself a fan of Sir Keir Starmer and the Labour Government.
Discussing the Prime Minister, he said: 'He's not a shouter and he's not a show-off. I'm fed up with show-offs.
'I don't care if they're from Russia or America or here. I want people who really do have some experience of the world, and have developed a care for other people.'
He also claimed Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have open 'disrespect' for others.
'If you start talking about other people as if they are less important, that their culture is less important, then you're on a road to confrontation.'
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