QUENTIN LETTS on the farmers protest: Two burly lads squared as much as the minister and gave him each barrels

Two burly lads spotted Environment Secretary Steve Reed waiting in a parliamentary corridor before he entered a committee hearing.

Gloucestershire dairy farmer David Barton, 57, and his son Ben, 34, from Middle Duntisbourne, near Cirencester, formed a muscular wall around the pop-eyed minister. They started telling him what they thought of his Government’s farms tax. Not chuffed.

‘We thought the relationship with you Labour guys was real,’ rumbled the elder Barton, just about containing his anger, ‘and we feel really let down.’ Slender, suburban Mr Reed – he’s the designer-stubbled one with the £425 gumboots from Lord Alli – opened and closed his mouth but little noise came out.

A Commons doorkeeper, seeing Mr Reed almost sink from view amid the tractor boys’ Viyella shirts and moleskin gilets, declined to ride to his assistance.

Barry Gardiner (Lab, Brent N) decided to be heroic. He waded into the fray to inform the Bartons they had their figures ‘wrong’. They had spoken of their £5million farm making only a few thousand a year. ‘I don’t believe that,’ snorted Mr Gardiner. ‘You have a very inefficient use of capital.’ David Barton, sighing: ‘That’s farming.’

How he didn’t punch the patronising idiot, Lord knows. Instead he walked away, saying: ‘Enjoy your dinner tonight, Barry Gardiner, ‘cos it will have been someone like me who worked seven days a week to produce it.’

In the environment committee hearing Mr Reed repeated that farmers were ‘wrong’. They didn’t know their own business. Marie Antoinette told French peasants to eat cake. Mr Reed told British smallholders to consult tax lawyers.

If worried about being bankrupted by Rachel Reeves‘s Budget, he said, ‘the best thing to do is listen to your tax adviser’. Hire a professional to help you avoid Labour taxes. Odd thing for a Cabinet minister to say.

Environment Secretary Steve Reed appearing before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee at the House of Commons, London

Protesting farmers fill Whitehall opposite Downing Street in central London against inheritance tax

There is something casual and lip-curling about Mr Reed. He comes across as a thoroughly discordant, cowardly piece of work. Though he had cowered from the Bartons he was now, in front of fellow MPs, itchy for a fight, flashing his eyes, leaning back in his seat, jabbing his bony right forefinger at the ceiling and taunting the committee’s Lib Dem chairman, Alistair Carmichael, about his own party’s dubious policy positions.

Dead farmers need not worry about death duties, averred Mr Reed breezily, because, well, they’d be dead. ‘They’re by definition not in the business any more.’ That’s one way of putting it.

His attitude to private money was clear when he said: ‘It’s a very established principle that when you have a very valuable asset, on death a share of it will go back to the state.’

Note that ‘go back’. Reed and his sort think all wealth originates from the state.

He was glad land values could plummet. Farmers with loans secured against assets may be less thrilled. Mr Reed also thought farmers should concentrate on solar panels and wind turbines. Who needs spuds, eh?

The rain-lashed streets outside were packed with rosy-cheeked rustics: thousands of ’em in gumboots, poaching coats and soaked caps. Quite a few were smoking rollies. There were homemade banners, one saying ‘Bullocks to Starmer’. Reverence for politicians was limited.

Attendees at the mass rally carried a banner reading ‘Keir Starver’

The protest is the biggest so far against the new Labour government 

A protester holds a placard calling UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer a ‘Farmer Harmer’ as thousands of farmers gathered to stage a protest against inheritance tax

When Sir Ed Davey made a speech, a lad near me asked his mate who it was. ‘Someone called Ed Bailey,’ came the bored reply. Talking of Baileys, the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, appeared earlier at the Treasury select committee. He was markedly leaner than of old. Maybe he has fought a personal battle with inflation.

Mr Bailey is an awkward performer. He fiddled with a paper clip and spoke for some time with his right palm placed on the side of his neck. Not unweird.

In down moments he kept muttering to himself. If you saw a bloke doing that at the airport gate you might gulp a bit and think twice about boarding your flight. Yet this man – with Ms Reeves – is running our economy.

Pass the parachute, Percy.