Labour’s inheritance tax raid has been slammed as a sexed-up brand of ‘corporate socialism’ imposed by ‘Starmer and his Davos mates’ to cleanse the countryside of Kulaks.
Jamie Blackett, who farms in Dumfries and Galloway, was reacting to Chancellor Reeves’ slapping previously exempt farmers with 20 per cent death duties on assets over £1million.
The government says it is a fair and balanced way to plug the £22billion black hole and only 500 farms will be affected a year. Both figures have been heavily contested.
But cash-poor, asset-rich farmers say the raid will wipe out dwindling profits and lead to many farmers selling up to foot the bill or because their motivation has been destroyed, damaging Britain’s food security.
Blackett, a writer and political activist, explained: “Well, for my family, this is real déjà vu, because in the 70s we were completely clobbered by inheritance tax, and the solution we found then was to sell off most of the land and then lease it back again. So we carried on as tenants.
“And it was sold, guess what, to a large insurance company who never actually visited, never invested anything in it, and the whole infrastructure really decayed to the point where it was in really quite a bad way.
“I was very lucky 20 years ago to be able to buy it back. And as soon as we were owner-occupiers again, we started investing in the business, and we put on a dairy four years ago, which has probably added a couple of million to the inheritance tax headache.
“I just feel we’re being punished now a second time. We’ve got this disaster.
“In the 70’s it was old-fashioned socialism. Now we’ve got a modern variant. We’ve got corporate socialism, which is really the old idea, but dressed up and made to look a bit sexier by Starmer and his Davos mates.
“They have a different idea of the way the economy should work. They don’t nationalise it. They just allow big corporates to move in and clear off all the Kulaks and run everything from large businesses.”
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Jamie Blackett tore into Keir Starmer’s sexed-up socialism inheritance tax raid
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Rural lobby groups, MPs and farmers have all warned inheritance tax is the final nail in the agricultural coffin after farmers have spent years working long hours for very little money.
They have also warned that when farmers sell up, it will be faceless companies often from abroad who buy up the land as they won’t have to pay a massive inheritance tax bill every forty or so years.
This will end many farming families’ custodianship of ‘their’ patch of the countryside, with dire consequences for our favourite landscapes as companies in London will care less about managing the land.
Blackett said: “It’s just so depressing to be back here again.
“It’s still in my lifetime, 50 years on from the 70s, talking about the same things again.
“Let’s hope that this time round we get going with a proper winter of discontent and let everybody know exactly what we feel about this and bring things to a head rather quicker than it happened last time and see if we can reverse this.”
Responding, a Defra spokesperson said: “Our commitment to farmers remains steadfast – we have committed £5 billion to the farming budget over two years, including more money than ever for sustainable food production, and we are developing a 25-year farming roadmap, focusing on how to make the sector more profitable in the decades to come.
“Our reform to Agricultural and Business Property Relief will impact around 500 estates a year. For these estates, inheritance tax will be at half the rate paid by others, with 10 years to pay the liability back interest free. This is a fair and balanced approach which fixes the public services we all rely on.”
Labour’s changes to inheritance tax take effect in April 2026.
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