Wow, what a turn around. I won’t go into detail on Labours backdown but what a turn around. Somehow this ideologically motivated tax has been watered down to cover £5 million of assets when you include spousal transfer. This is huge. Most of the credit should go to the NFU’s carful lobbying, of which we took part at home; writing letters to our MP and even hosting an MP on our farm. Credit should also go to those farmers who on a regular basis, protested outside parliament with their tractors.
Apparently it all came down to the line when the NFU president had to make a split second decision during a phone call with ministers on whether the NFU would stand down their campaign if the threshold was raised. I and many others think this was the correct decision. There will be later opportunities, especially at the next election, to campaign for the full removal of IHT. Until then we have won a small victory that will protect the most vulnerable in the UK agricultural industry.
This doesn’t mean everyone is happy. Many are complaining that the NFU shouldn’t be speaking for the industry and that the campaigns shouldn’t stop. These are often loud, privileged, opinionated voices that have little todo with the NFU. It is easy to criticise when you are not in the arena. Yes many these people contributed to industry wide campaigns, they played a part. But many of these efforts undermined lobbiests and alienated MP’s and ministers; and even the PM who at one point was trapped in a building site by farmers wanting “to talk”. The lobbying the NFU did to gather labour MP’s was vital. They were never going to get the open support of 70-80 rebellious Labour MPs that would have been needed to overturn the policy. However the 30-40 they did have supporting their cause put enough pressure on the government to make them uncomfortable, to bring them to the table and to offer the deal to the NFU president. If the NFU president hadn’t taken it, the Government would have told their MPs that a reasonable offer had been made and it was likely the MPs would turn around to the NFU and say something along the lines of; “we will not support the further pursuit of your cause as a reasonable offer was made and you rejected it”. That would have been a waste of political capital.
Of course it was not quite this simple; stories of farmers mental health played a large part in influencing MPs and the general public. Furthermore, I will always be curious how events on the continent affected the governments position. I want to know how much of the violent protest undertaken by EU Farmers protesting against an international trade deals were being monitored by our Labour government? And how worried were about UK farmers becoming more extreme? I will probably never know.
Moving forward will be perilous for the NFU. Someone has challenged the presidents leadership at the next election. At LAMMA, there is a palpable tension in the air. Will the NFU membership be split along IHT lines? It would be a great shame if the hard work of the last 18 months was undermined by some shortsighted hotheads. We have won the battle. but there is still the “war” to win and repealing IHT will take years.
P/S I can’t claim any of this as fact. Most has been heard second and third hand.
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