OPINION:
It looks like the United Kingdom’s Labor Party government may finally eliminate its kulaks.
Last December, it was widely reported that the not-yet-elected Labor government was formulating an economic plan that involved cutting inheritance tax exemptions for agricultural property. These exemptions allowed farmers to pass their land down to their children without spoiling their thin margins, as most farms have the vast majority of their capital in nonliquid assets — such as land and equipment — and not in the bank.
Labor’s proposal would eliminate that, forcing farmers to pay cash they simply would not have on hand and forcing them to sell property just to pay the tax. The story has popped up a few times since then, as elections loomed closer and Conservative politicians were eager to show that their opponents had awful ideas.
Understandably, there was significant backlash and public outcry over these proposals. So Labor politicians changed their tune, at least publicly, swaying between asserting that they never really intended to go through with the plan or that it was never on the table in the first place. Now that they are in power, we will see what Labor’s real position is, unburdened by the need to get elected.
I recently came across a video of a Welsh farmer, Gareth Wyn Jones, who bluntly explains how the rumored land inheritance tax would obliterate family farms, which rely on being passed from generation to generation. “If [U.K. Prime Minister] Keir Starmer and the new Labor government put this inheritance tax on,” Mr. Jones said, “these farms are not going to be able to survive.”
The party’s official manifesto said that it recognizes that food security is important and vowed to “set a target for half of all food purchased across the public sector to be locally produced or certified to higher environmental standards,” which might sound good until you think a little more about that “or” tucked in there.
What does a higher environmental standard mean in the U.K.? Who is going to buy that farmland? It will either become part of the “re-wilding” — taking even more land off the table for producing food locally, forcing Britain to rely on ever more imports despite Labor’s slick promises. Or the land will be gobbled up by large companies, as so many farms in the United States have been.
It’s highly likely that wind and solar developers will want farmland. In Labor’s manifesto, the leaders said they planned to “work with the private sector to double onshore wind, triple solar power, and quadruple offshore wind by 2030.” That will take a lot of land, and it won’t come at the expense of urban homes, commercial real estate or protected natural areas. Ask yourself what land that leaves.
As recently as last year, under the Tory government, climate initiatives already underway were punishing farmers. The pursuit of net-zero emissions, especially attempts to restrict nitrogen fertilizers and fuel use, raises animal feed costs and affects every step of the agricultural process, from planting to harvest.
To make matters worse, the U.K. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs pays farmers to stop growing food on their land in the name of net zero. As an aside, it is worth noting that current inheritance tax exemptions are tied to whether or not the land is being worked. One wonders if this is a backdoor attempt to implement the farm inheritance tax.
Plans to restrict solar panel installation on productive agricultural land were scrapped, opening even active farmland to those developments.
The ideological left in the U.K. and the United States alike say they favor redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor. But what they actually do is redistribute wealth from the working class to multinational corporations, wealthy, politically connected elites tied to green energy boondoggles or the government itself.
This is growing into a system far worse than any medieval feudal system. At least the lords then raised armies to keep the land safe from invaders and understood that it needed to be as profitable as possible for the laborers, whether free or serf and, by extension, fill their own coffers.
Today’s U.K. leadership (seemingly regardless of party; remember that the Tories were in charge during most of the green push) welcomes invasion. It punishes farmers for daring to produce food if they make even a scintilla of profit.
Beware — this could be coming to an American farm near you.
• Linnea Lueken (llueken@heartland.org) is a research fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at the Heartland Institute. Follow her on X @LinneaLueken.
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