Labour’s tax on farmers might show to be the defining blunder of the Reeves’ price range, warns ALEX BRUMMER

This green and pleasant land is devoted to its farmers. 

Agriculture is the only industry which has an exclusive daily bulletin on the BBC – Farming Today, a long running radio soap opera – The Archers, a TV series – Emmerdale, and a prime slot on Sunday night viewing in the shape of Countryfile.

As an industry, its contribution, put at £13.9billion or 0.6 per cent of the nation’s output, is relatively modest. But the family-owned farm is critical to the UK’s culture.

In August this year, when on holiday, I went in search of my first home, Dewbrook Farm in Horam, East Sussex. There was no trace of the long, tree-lined driveway, the apple orchard or the chicken runs. 

Idyllic: A combine harvester harvesting a field near Ashford in Kent. As an industry, farming’s contribution is relatively modest. But the family-owned farm is critical to the UK’s culture

Just a farmhouse bearing the same name and a housing estate. It may not be the intention but the levy imposed by Rachel Reeves on farms valued at more than £1million may prove a fast track to releasing land for Labour’s housebuilding. 

Or it could turn out to be the Chancellor’s ‘pasty tax’, suffering the same fate as George Osborne’s levy when he sought to impose VAT on ambient foods in 2012.

There is a myth that farmers in their tweed, cords and Land Rovers are plutocrats living high off the hog. 

Admittedly, there are tycoons, such as billionaire inventor James Dyson, who have sheltered some of their wealth in agricultural land. 

Naturally the taxman is anxious to reap some of the gains when this real estate cascades down the generations.

But most farms are not owned by engineering pioneers or City titans. They are in the hands of modest, hard-working families, helping to preserve the landscape and supply our food needs. 

These are working people, labouring around the clock seven days a week, for whom working from home means disposing of sludge, doing the milking, collecting the eggs or looking after the strawberry tunnels.

The loss of inheritance tax breaks for medium-sized farms will mean many being sold off or broken up. It will hurt organic produce and make the UK ever more dependent on overseas imports, worsening the nation’s trade balance.

Labour’s failure to understand rural Britain may prove to be a defining blunder of Reeves’ budget.

Gas sprint

Shell’s strategy of doubling down on fossil fuel production rather than bowing to a climate change agenda looks to be paying off. 

The group’s focus on liquefied natural gas (LNG) production, enhanced by the oil giant’s £47billion purchase of UK exploration firm BG Group a decade ago, is proving hugely valuable.

In the third quarter, when refining profits plummeted by 70 per cent, LNG came racing to the rescue with a stonking 13 per cent rise in profits. As a result, overall earnings in the third quarter came in at £4.6billion, marginally down on a year earlier.

Under Wael Sawan, Shell has, like US rivals such as Exxon, decided there is plenty of life in fossil fuels and that delivering for shareholders and taxpayers is the main objective. 

The group has extended its share buybacks and the debt levels at £26.9billion are at their lowest since 2015.

Labour needs to be careful that it doesn’t alienate Shell and for that matter BP in its zeal to green Britain by 2030. 

Shell has indicated in the past that if the environmental, social and governance agenda in the UK becomes too intrusive it might even consider changing its domicile.

It would be a catastrophe if one of the FTSE 100’s top constituents were to be driven offshore by green fanaticism.

Pumped up

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband will doubtless be dancing in the aisles as British households buy into the heat pump revolution. The latest data shows that UK certified installations have hit 250,000.

The stampede is terrific for Swedish manufacturer Aira, with the group’s UK boss Daniel Sarefjord celebrating the improved incentives for boiler upgrades.

This is all terrific, but the objective of Great British Energy, launched by Labour this year, was to create tens of thousands of green manufacturing jobs to compensate for cancelling the North Sea.

The ambition is great, but unfortunately many of the new jobs are elsewhere, with Aira choosing a lower cost Polish factory.

The new UK jobs tax, following the national insurance rise, will hardly encourage new foreign investment.

One fears no one in the Government understands business.