Labour’s beef with farmers
Political Fix
Financial Times
4.2 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 21 November 2024
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After winning swaths of rural seats in the general election, Labour’s relationship with the countryside has nosedived, amid a row over the government’s plan to impose inheritance tax on some farms. Host Lucy Fisher is joined by Political Fix regular Jim Pickard and political correspondent Anna Gross to discuss the changes to agricultural property relief and the wider political fallout. The team also dissects the row over Rachel Reeves’ CV edit and scrutinises her past remarks about her career. Plus, FT foreign editor Alec Russell joins to discuss what happens next in the Ukraine war after Kyiv fired US and UK-made long-range missiles into Russia for the first time this week.
Follow Lucy on X: @LOS_Fisher, Jim @PickardJE, Anna @AnnaSophieGross, Alec @AlecuRussell
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Presented by Lucy Fisher. Produced by Tamara Kormornick. The executive producer is Manuela Saragosa. Audio mix and original music by Breen Turner. The broadcast engineers are Andrew Georgiadis and Petros Giumpassis. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Political Fix from the Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher. |
| 0:05.9 | Coming up, the relationship between Labor and the countryside, it's complicated. |
| 0:11.8 | Also, Rachel Reeves' CV, myths and facts. |
| 0:15.7 | Plus, Ukraine strikes Russia with UK and US-made missiles. |
| 0:19.5 | What happens next? |
| 0:22.5 | Here to discuss it all, |
| 0:28.1 | our political fix regular Jim Picard. Hi, Jim. Hi, Lucy. And the FTs political correspondent Anna Anna. Hi, Lucy. Hi, Lucy. So let's talk first about the countryside. Jim, let's just drill down into the nub of the argument here. |
| 0:41.0 | We saw this huge protest on Westminster on Tuesday, 20,000-odd farmers coming out to protest this change in the budget to inheritance tax rules. |
| 0:51.1 | Tell us about that and why the numbers are disputed. |
| 0:55.8 | So I was just getting hung up there by the idea that you call them 20,000 odd farmers. They're very normal people. It was a very civilised |
| 1:00.2 | protest. It was a very gentle, very English, British protest where, you're quite good nature, |
| 1:06.2 | but there's no doubting the anger felt in rural communities, particularly by farmers, about the fact |
| 1:11.9 | that they are having to pay inheritance tax on their estates for the first time, I think, |
| 1:15.9 | in about 40 years. |
| 1:17.2 | So they've got used to this idea that when you are deceased, you can pass on your entire |
| 1:23.1 | estate without paying any inheritance tax. |
| 1:25.6 | Now, this was an announcement in the budget by Rachel Reeves. |
| 1:28.7 | She thought this was a compromise solution because the farms are not being hit by the 40% |
| 1:32.8 | inheritance tax to the rest of us will have to pay if we are lucky enough to be among the only |
| 1:37.3 | 4% of the British property that end up paying IHT. The farms will pay 20% and not only are they |
| 1:42.8 | paying half of everybody else, but the threshold |
| 1:45.2 | at which they start paying is much higher. |
... |
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