Don't Vote Labour Again (Part 16)

Starmer versus Farmers (Pt II)

The environmental demands on farmers took an even more absurd turn on October 26th, not long before the IHT announcement on October 30th. The government announced they wanted to halve meat and dairy production by 2050 (in 26 years). This, as mentioned above, is all in the name of the Net Zero drive. Those pesky cows do insist on breathing and digesting food, and what's more it makes people fat and happy! Phase it out.

Essentially such a move would be the state mandating the market not to create and sell established, innocuous produce. This isn't crack cocaine or even alcohol or cigarettes (also on the banning list). It's not blue asbestos or lead toy soldiers - it is basic food staples.

Indeed, such government intrusion is already happening with the car industry in the UK and across Europe. Auto makers are forced to sell a certain quota of electric vehicles, at the expense of the more popular hybrid or petrol engines. At the moment it is 22% of cars and 10% of vans (set to rise) and if non-electric vehicles rise above 78% or 90% the firms are fined £15,000 for each vehicle sold. Because electric vehicles are not selling, the firms are both losing potential trade from the other vehicles and losing revenue from fines. Thus factories are beginning to shut down (they survived Brexit and Covid but did not survive Starmer). Vauxhall will close a plant in Luton and Ford will cut 800 jobs across the UK.

The same will happen to the farmers with meat and milk. They will lose trade and be run out of business, and the country will lose food security in a very uncertain world. If we were to be cut off from imports for whatever reason, we would be in serious trouble. Meat and milk are high protein, high fat foods, which would be essential in such a situation. Starving people don't go vegan.

The IHT proposal is not just about green guff, it's about wealth, class and power. The modern leftists do not seem to like self-made businessmen having a stake in the economy, possessing control over their destiny, and keeping things in the family. They especially don't like working class people with such power. It helps in provoking their animosity that this type of self-sufficient person doesn't tend to vote for them. The middle class professionals that run the Labour Party like having power themselves, of course, and they happily wangle their sons and daughters well-paid jobs, but that's different. They are virtuous after all.

On the other side, they also hate the 'landowning toffs' that they feel belong in another century. Much vitriol by the Starmtroopers was unleashed against this perceived foe, probably to detract from the true potential victims of the policy. This demonstrated such people don't really understand the realities of farming or business, and are crude class warriors, despite being pretty plummy themselves.

Distinguishing himself in the ‘departure from reality’ stakes was the former Blair advisor, John McTernan. In a bizarre interview on GB News with Patrick Christys he said:

"I'm personally in favour of doing to the... if the farmers want to go on the streets, we can do to them what Margaret Thatcher did to the miners...that's an industry we could do without... if people are so upset that they want to go into the streets and spray slurry on them...then we don't need, er, the small farmers"

Christys summed up perfectly in his response: "OK, alright... so this got weird".

Needless to say, the clip went viral for all the wrong reasons. To his credit, Starmer was sure to disassociated himself from the comments. McTernan is a senior figure from Labour's past, but not its present, and he has an extremely mixed up back-story - going from Blair loyalist to Corbyn hater to Momentum member. He seems mad as a box of frogs and barely coherent, but the comment really helped illustrate the perceived hostility to farmers, and will always be on the record.

Partly helped by this clip, many people have drawn a parallel between Labour's policy and the oppression of the Kulaks in the USSR. The Kulaks were what could be regarded as middle-class farmers, making a decent income from their businesses. Lenin and Stalin, being communists, wanted to seize control of the means of agricultural production and distribution. The process was called collectivisation. Farms were taken over by the state and quota demands were forced on farmers, punishable by the gulag or death if not met (or if supplies were hidden away).

The Kulaks of course did not see much food, nor much money for producing it, and their rural communities were soon driven into poverty and starvation. Ukraine suffered in particular, with millions dying, an event which still has ramifications today.

In Stalin's eyes collectivisation was a practical notion as well as an ideological one. It funnelled food into the industrialising cities, and raised money and soft power from exports. It also did away with a group that held power of its own - power derived from the land they owned, the markets they could influence, and their individual enterprise. In the parlance of Machiavellian politics, this was a 'rival castle' to the regime. Ideologically, Stalin was simply obeying the hard-line tenets of communism. For him it was a win-win. For many of his subjects it was mass death.

Now, making a direct comparison is rather melodramatic, and we need to bear in mind that absurd comparisons with fascism are directed against social conservatives by the left. However, in a much less total and violent way, the policies ranged against farmers do in a sense achieve the same aim. They wrestle the means of production from a politically powerful lobby group. Where it differs from the communists is that control will be handed over to big agriculture, who will snap up a lot of the smaller farms. Property developers and renewable energy magnates will absorb the rest. This could be referred to as kleptocracy, oligarghy or corporatocracy (all notions against the ideals of Marx, from which socialism is derived).

One wonders if any Labour ministers or MPs have shares in big agriculture, property development or renewable energy. Perhaps there are jobs promised to them if they further those sectors. Maybe they have friends or family involved in those fields, or perhaps such people are making donations to them. In unrelated news, renewables magnate Dale Vince has donated £5 million to the Labour Party; and Starmer recently had a meeting with the predatory asset management giant, BlackRock. These things are hardly concealed from us.

Back to the comparison between Labour and the Soviets, the ultimate purpose differs as well. The Soviets wanted a state-run economy, the demise of capitalism and an all-powerful government. These modern leftists want a global capitalist economy, managed by technocrats and with a 'sustainable' and 'ethical' bent.

The Soviets at least realised a country needed to produce food. They were not ecological lunatics, willing to hobble their society's industrial or agricultural output. They actually believed in a state that provided for (compliant) citizens, with money or resources no object. No ordinary person was very well off, but nobody was homeless and there was very little crime. The Soviets also believed in national sovereignty and there only being two genders. You see such views still represented by figures like George Galloway.

Starmer's lot - indeed the centre-left influenced political class as a whole - seem to have lost all focus on these aspects and are keen on this globalist-capitalist vision instead. It's a strange hybrid between cultural Marxism, green evangelism and corporate control. Occasionally they are inconsistent and when the polls look bad they make overtures to us traditional folk. It's Blair triangulation 101, except Starmer's motley crew are nowhere near as competent.

Their exact ideology might be different from the Russian comrades, even from the traditional British left, but many on the right will insist that the left never changes. In one way another, they will say, the socialists (for anyone on the left are socialists) always appropriate peoples' private property, despise small businessmen and restrict their freedoms. It doesn't matter if you're Vladimir Lenin or Clement Attlee or Tony Blair - you are after the wealth and control of others. All that changes is who benefits. I don't fully agree, but there is an element of truth to this. Scratch a New Labour politician and you will often find a background of radical socialism in their past, still informing them. Starmer is no exception. The old authoritarian, West-hating style is there, but the aims and targets are new.

You can imagine that Jeremy Clarkson would make such arguments, having regularly derided socialism over the years. Clarkson of course has the newfound status as an authority on agriculture, thanks to his globally popular documentary series about his own farm. All eyes were on him as he fired several broadsides into Starmer over the issue, culminating in his appearance at the massive farmer's protest in Westminster. A crowd of 20,000 farmers and their supporters watched as a peaky-looking Clarkson, recovering from a heart attack and back problems, gave a robust and actually quite constructive speech. Rather than merely agitating, he was showing the government an off-ramp - imploring them to see sense and back down. This was not heeded, of course.

Many are predicting he will go into politics, perhaps with Reform. I'm not so sure he will. The man usually just likes to opine and, in a good way, play the clown. He seems to have a very cynical view of politics, while at other times has cosied up to the liberal machine (Cameron and Remain). He tends to demonstrate a superficial, gut-led understanding of the political world. Others claim he is merely trying to avoid his own children paying IHT on his farm, or wants publicity, and has no wider aims. Putting a lie to these assertions are the Clarkson is richer and already more famous than he could ever need to be. As he points out, he could afford to arrange a trust, put the farm in it, and just try to stay alive for seven years. I believe the man has genuinely come to care about the subject, and has become conscious of just how insidious the system is.

The snarky Starmtroopers had better look inside their own ranks, at the Labour MP Henry Tufnell (Mid and South Pembrokeshire). Twenty days before the budget on October 10th, his parents coincidentally transferred their 2,000 acre Cotswold farm to Tufnell’s brother. A trust fund was also set up for their future grandchildren. It is alleged they did this to beat the IHT (perhaps mistakenly believing it would apply immediately). It is further alleged, inevitably, that Tufnell had inside information about the policy and forewarned them. Tufnell of course denies this.

Perhaps I am wrong, and Clarkson will plunge into politics, becoming our new tempered version of Donald Trump. Certainly we cannot make do with Nigel Farage or Robert Jenrick. Perhaps like a lot of us, he will reject the liberalism we have been conditioned with. Before he contented himself merely with being politically incorrect behind the wheel of a muscle car. But the time for that is over, as the crypto commies try to destroy everything we hold dear, and seemingly everything we need to survive.