British farmers are growing increasingly disillusioned with politics and politicians
Farmers in my East Anglian corner of Britain are currently toiling to bring in the harvest. The work is, more or less, an around the clock slog now. The heat and clear skies of June, that ripened the winter barley and saw it swiftly brought home, was replaced by a July of glowering storm clouds and downpours. Now, in August, I see standing spring barley and wheat blackening in the fields. The irregular dampening has resulted in mildew and chitting grains, darkly foretelling of parsimonious profit margins at best. Yet it is rare to see my neighbours getting too downbeat.
Viz’s “Farmer Palmer” portrayed our agrarians as whinging subsidy junkies with a penchant for shooting ramblers (at least it did when the comic was wittily offensive rather than today’s beigely woke incarnation). In my experience this stereotype missed the mark by a country mile, certainly when it comes to the weather. Most of my friends and all of my customers are farmers. To a man, (yes most are men) they are stoic, phlegmatic souls with an old Norse attitude towards fate. The wrong weather at the wrong time, that can eradicate an entire year’s expense and labour is not welcomed, but it is accepted in the manner a City type on the tube bears their homeward commute will assuredly be filled with a fug of B.O. Wet, dry, cold or wind are phenomena farmers shrug off — they can neither predict it or do much to mitigate against it, so why hold a grudge they sensibly reason?
I would extend this enigmatic agrarian mien towards nature to most countryfolk, be they hedgelayers, fishermen, woodsmen, gardeners or gamekeepers. Eking out a living from the land, or the sea, reminds you that the rhythms of the earth are unstoppable. To gripe about the weather may be a peculiarly British pastime, but it is largely restricted to those for whom getting drenched or chilled is an annoyance rather than a way of life. Those truly impacted by what does or doesn’t fall from the sky, treat it with a shrug and a muttered “meh.”
Does this somewhat accepting view on the immutabilities of life, cause rural types to hold more raucous and decadent events than those enjoyed by their fellows from the town? There is no better public example of hedonistic yokel display than The Game Fair. This shindig — dedicated to all things furred, feathered and finned, and those who seek to shoot, chase or hook them — was first inaugurated in 1958. Since then the show has travelled about, setting up annually at grand country houses throughout the land.
For most of its history, the event was run, and wallet cripplingly underwritten, by the Country Landowners Association (CLA). When that august organisation morphed into the Country Land and Business Association, it twigged that the business part of The Game Fair was unsustainable. Since then the event has been privately run, and this has led to something of a decline in its earthiness. The early Game Fairs were a Witan for the nation’s gamekeepers, discussing essentials such as the best method for tackling grey squirrels or reducing worm burdens in grouse. Duke after Earl after Lord rubbed shoulders with the common man. South Yorkshire miners clutched terriers on chains; Norfolk wildfowlers, with the tang of estuarine mud about their beards, peered at gundog displays. Farmers met Foresters met ferreters to drink real-ale and chew literal and metaphorical fat.
Today The Game Fair continues to attract many genuinely hard bitten rustics, but the retail element has changed from the days when the majority of stands sold bird feeders, traps, chainsaws and Dunlop wellies. Now the show is a cat walk for country glamour. Nigh on 130,000 visitors wandered the aisles at this year’s fair, held at Ragley Hall in Warwickshire. They gawped at, and occasionally bought from, purveyors of country chic. Wellies for five hundred quid? Take your pick. A bronze sculpture of a Labrador? Yours for the price of a VW Golf. Row upon row of swanky waterproofs, unfathomably technical rifle scopes, hand made English shotguns, tailored tweeds, hats by Lock or luxury loo seats decorated with safari scenes tempt the buyers. When the weary day-shoppers wend their way home, a few thousand of the more die-hard Fair goers return to the campsite — for many, this three day event is their one holiday of the year. Among the tents, caravans, yurts and motor-homes parties happen, and discussions about all things rural go on long into the Chablis fuelled night. The retailers too have a loquacious conflab and booze up, inviting exhibitors from the myriad of trade bodies, lobbying groups and charities dedicated to the land to join them.
The rural set may rarely if ever complain about much, but when it comes to Labour, by God are they grousing
Here then is the finest place to discover the true lie of the land. You are furnished with a glass of decent wine, a pheasant based canapé, and you listen and learn. You hear the managing director of the country’s oldest gun maker expounding on how the government’s proposed changes to firearms licensing will decimate the gun trade (worth over £3 billion to the economy, he adds). A Suffolk farmer reveals that his business now hangs by the slenderest of threads, thanks to Prime Minister Starmer’s imposition of Inheritance Tax on farmland. The whiskery chap alongside him, who rents the sporting rights on that land, shakes his head mournfully, he knows the land he once shot over is destined to be a sea of solar panels. An ecologist from Weardale tells a wildlife artist from Hertfordshire that the curlew is doomed to extinction thanks to Labour slashing the DEFRA budget. The more you listen, the more you discover just how unpopular and unfathomable the Starmer administration is to country types. Merely mention the names Reeves, Reed or Miliband and strap yourself in for a lengthy diatribe of complaints and woes. Each complainant feels Labour is spitefully targeting their own life and livelihood. To them this isn’t politics as they’ve ever known it — this feels personal. The rural set may rarely if ever complain about much, but when it comes to Labour, by God are they grousing.
Curiously, what alternative they favour to a Labour government isn’t clear. The Conservative Party, I was repeatedly told, as I nipped from drinks party to drinks party in the afterglow of day two of the Game Fair, has shot its bolt. 183 rural constituencies, most of them previously staunch Tory strongholds, fell to Labour at the last General Election. Admittedly the reason for this wasn’t a sudden rural veer towards the Starmer brand of sixth form socialism. Swathes, who had previously held their nose and voted Tory did lend their vote to Reform, just as many told me they didn’t bother with the ballot box at all. All sorts of anomalies arose as a result. In my own local constituency of Waveney Valley, the most agricultural of any in England, voters awoke on July 5th 2024 to discover they were now represented by Adrian Ramsay, the notably anti-farming co-leader of the Green Party. Two Sussex farmers I met in one of the Game Fair cider tents told me they had voted Labour for the first time in their lives. They had listened to Daniel Zeichner, when he was shadow farming minister, talking at the NFU conference and liked what they heard. One ruefully scratched a chin and muttered, “Turned out he was a bollocks like the rest of them”. To their view the Tories were now untrustworthy. Memories of Boris Johnson and Zac Goldsmith seemingly souring any long term Conservative loyalties.
With such overt ill feeling towards Labour and the Conservatives, it would be all too easy to assume the countryside is there for Nigel Farage’s taking. Yet, that wasn’t the vibe I discerned. The countryside works on longer term planning than the five year short termism of government. If my Game Fair interviewees were any guide, the countryside is angry, and they are for once truly grumbling. Most felt that politicians of all colours had let down them, their businesses and the wildlife they are obsessed with. The party that wins the rural vote at the next General Election needs farmer friendly policies not frenzied populist promises. Many at the Fair expressed a concern that Reform are strong on the latter and largely absent on the former. The countryside it seems, is at present, planning to vote “none of the above”.
