RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Labour places the boot into farmers (…with £420 designer wellies from Lord Alli)

Every picture tells a story, according to Rod Stewart. So what are we to make of these two snapshots of our new Socialist overlords?

Exhibit One: The Right Honourable Steve Reed, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, posing in a pair of £420 leather-lined Le Chameau ‘Chasseur’ boots alongside Minette Batters, former president of the National Farmers’ Union.

Exhibit Two: Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves at a farm in Swerford, Oxfordshire, with Keir Starmer on the General Election campaign trail in July. She’s wearing a pair of pristine white plimsolls. Both photocalls were arranged to demonstrate Labour’s commitment to the rural economy.

That, of course, was before Reeves sounded the death knell for farming families in her scorched-earth Budget, scrapping the exemptions which until now have allowed farms to be passed down the generations free of inheritance tax. 

As the headline on a commentary by Reed’s former new best friend Batters in The Mail on Sunday put it: ‘This Treasury attack on farmers is unforgivable. It will destroy lives, force up food prices . . . and ruin the countryside.’

The devastating impact of the tax-grab cannot be overstated, both on those directly affected and the country’s food security. Farms which have been in some families for hundreds of years will have to be sold to meet the tax bills, which could run into hundreds of thousands. Others will simply go bankrupt.

Suicide rates among our farmers, already alarmingly high, are predicted to soar. So much for Labour’s posturing about Mental Elf.

Food production, which has fallen from 78 per cent of our needs after World War II to just 62 per cent today, will collapse further, making us increasingly dependent on foreign imports.

This is despite Starmer promising before the election to protect the rural economy. He told the NFU conference earlier this year: ‘We can’t have farmers struggling.’ As we have since discovered to our cost after any number of broken promises, Starmer speaks with forked tongue. A complete and utter lawyer.

Still, we should have seen this coming. All you had to do was look at their feet. Reed, the MP for Streatham in South London, obviously thought he cut quite a dash in his designer wellies, which cost more than many farmers earn in a week.

Not that he paid for them, of course. They were bought for him by Labour’s sugar-daddy Waheed Alli, just like Starmer’s fancy spectacles and suits.

Le Chameau Chasseurs might be all the rage on Clapham Common, but your average farmer wouldn’t be seen dead in a pair.

As a former leader of Lambeth Council, Reed will be well acquainted with Clapham Common, which falls within the borough. Not so much with the everyday country folk of Much-Culling-In-The-Marsh.

Who thought it was a good idea to put a former leader of the Socialist Republic of Lambeth in charge of agriculture?

The only cash crop they grow in South London is pot. Reed’s background is in publishing, not pig-rearing.

He’s more interested in the ‘Environment’ bit of his brief than the Food and Rural Affairs.

Since taking up the post, he said: ‘There’s a need to transition farming to a more nature-positive model.’ Whatever the hell that means. No one is more ‘nature-positive’ than the farming community, caring for livestock, nurturing crops and maintaining the landscape of our green and pleasant.

Labour politicians can’t look at a field with wanting to ‘rewild’ it or carpet it with solar panels. Reed probably thought he looks the dog’s wotsits in his posh Wellingtons. But in the real world of the working countryside he’d have stood out like a sore thumb.

It reminded me of the Only Fools episode in which Del Boy kitted out Rodney in tweed plus-twos and deerstalker for a shooting party.

Reed’s outfit couldn’t have shouted ‘Sarf Lunnon’ any louder if he’d taken along a sawn-off Purdey, like Del.

About the only place in the countryside he’d have got away with his Le Chameaus is the Soho Farmhouse, the Cotswold home-from-home of London luvvies.

As for Reeves, who also hails from urban South London, what was she thinking when she decided to pull on a pair of white plimsolls for a farm visit? They’d have been covered in muck in no time at all.

I doubt she bought them herself, either. They were probably paid for by the Labour donor, not Lord Alli in this case, who bunged her £7,500 to buy clothes.

Their choice of footwear is a glaring illustration of Labour’s total failure to understand or empathise with rural folk.

Not that I imagine they care. Modern Labour is a metropolitan party. They know about as much about Much Culling as they do about the travails of trying to run a small business.

We should have seen this coming. It’s 20 years since Labour, under Tony Blair, banned fox hunting and sent in the police to crack skulls when the Countryside March came to town.

Starmer might take the knee to Black Lives Matter but he couldn’t give a damn about the hard-pressed farmers of rural Britain.

If every picture tells a story, then the photos of Reeves and Reed in their fancy footwear are worth a thousand words.

Speaking of footwear (see elsewhere), what kind of shape are your slippers in? If they’re a bit ropey, you could be entitled to a free pair courtesy of the NHS.

Reader Stephen Brace emails from Essex with exciting news of the latest initiative from his local health authority.

The ‘Slipper Swap’ programme kicks off at Ingatestone fire station tomorrow and runs until December 18, taking in Hutton, Basildon and a tea dance in Brentwood. If you’re over 65, just take along your old slippers and they’ll give you a brand new ‘NHS-approved’ pair with ‘secure fastenings and robust soles’.

The idea is to reduce the risk of older folk suffering trip and fall injuries and cluttering up A&E and overcrowded hospital wards (more likely, corridors) during the annual winter crisis.

I went base over tip on the stairs last Christmas. Since I’m over 65, I wonder if I qualify, or is this confined to Essex?

Goodness knows how much all this is costing, but we keep being told that the health service is skint. Rachel Reeves is taxing us until the pips squeak to bung the NHS another £25 billion, which will rapidly disappear down the usual black hole.

How can they afford gimmicks like this when there’s a backlog of seven million waiting for treatment? Yes, I get the logic of this scheme, but when the NHS was set up, I doubt Beveridge envisaged that one day it would extend to giving away carpet slippers.

Slip, slidin’ away…

Civilian staff at Scotland Yard, including 999 call handlers, are refusing to return to their desks, insisting they can carry on WFH.

It’s bad enough the police not investigating crimes such as burglary. In future you won’t even be able to report them.

‘Thank you for calling 999. All our operators are working from home today, eating Hobnobs and watching reruns of The Bill on UK Gold …’

I wrote last week about councils banning Guy Fawkes Night fireworks. A number of readers have asked if the ban extends to Diwali celebrations, currently taking place across the country. Thought not.