Baroness Mallalieu is shouting in my ear over the sound of hundreds of tractors honking and hooting in protest at Labour’s shock decision to impose inheritance tax on family farms.
‘They can’t give up because it’s a way of life, their future, their inheritance, their home – it goes right to the heart of people’s families,’ she yells, immaculate and teeny-tiny in her bright purple tweed jacket outside Westminster.
‘I know farmers who are tearing their hair out. Farmers in tears. Some are contemplating suicide. It’s all so wrong.’
Recently, 79-year-old Ann Mallalieu has become one of the most vocal critics of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s ill-conceived plan, likely to affect more than 50,000 farms across the country.
Which is quite right, given she’s the President of the Countryside Alliance and a smallholder in Exmoor with 120 Poll Dorset sheep, (‘lovely smiling faces’), a pony, four hunters (she adores hunting) and an awful lot of poultry.
But perhaps more surprisingly, she is also a Labour peer – and has been since 1991 after she left a glittering career at the Bar where, as a junior, she worked with the late barrister and dramatist Sir John Mortimer on pornography cases.
Not that she’s ever really been the sort to toe the party line if she feels strongly about something. So she was right in the thick of the 10,000-strong crowd at the first farmers’ march three weeks ago.
Since then, she has been quick to share her views about Labour’s controversial plans, and how it is becoming the ‘cruel party’. And when we meet on Wednesday, she’s been dashing in and out of the tropically-heated House of Lords to the icy streets to show her support.
Baroness Mallalieu, 79, has been one of the most vocal critics of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ fiscal plans, including her inheritance tax grab on farmers
Ann Mallalieu pictured drinking a cocktail on June 1 1967
All of which must surely tick off Sir Keir Starmer a bit, I assume, as we thaw out with a cup of tea. Has anyone from Downing Street asked her politely – or otherwise – to tone it down?
‘Oh no! I think they regard me as beyond the pale,’ she laughs. ‘So they leave me alone and I just get on with it.’
It turns out she has a lot more to say.
‘There have been some missteps. Big missteps!’ she says.
‘We have, in the Labour Party, this horrible streak of class envy and it has manifested itself in several policies like VAT on school fees – what were they thinking, doing it in the middle of a school year?’ And the fuel tax – ‘Wrong!’ she adds.
‘Class envy is a very unpleasant thing, and I thought we’d got away from it during the Thatcher years, but it’s coming back with a nasty vengeance.’
And, of course, the attack on family farmers – some of the hardest working people in the country, all still reeling after the Budget shock.
‘It sounded bad from the start, but then farmers spoke to their accountants and were advised it was much worse than they thought,’ she says. ‘Pretty much anything over 100 acres is going to be hit.’
Which means that Ann’s smallholding, at just 50 acres, won’t be affected. But the farms nearby are all in jeopardy. ‘One of my neighbours worked out that in a ten-mile radius of him – and discounting the three big estates and the smallholders – 40 farms would be affected,’ she says.
She knows many people who are feeling hopeless. Big burly men breaking down in tears of desperation. Elderly farmers knowing their family would be better off if they passed away before April 2026, when the new rules come into force.
‘Four farmers have killed themselves already. It’s an awful burden knowing what you could be landing your family with, particularly if you’re elderly. And if you’re a farmer, you’ve usually got a gun to do it with,’ she says. ‘So they need to do something as a matter of real urgency.’
But will they?
‘I don’t think they’re completely deaf. My own feeling, from the limited exchanges I’ve had, is that they know they’ve made a mistake – they’re saying they can’t do a U-turn but they could do some tweaking.
‘They’ve pitched it far too low to catch the people they really want [rich landowners using agricultural land as a tax dodge].’
She hopes that maybe this time, they’ll actually consult the farmers, do a bit more research than a single meeting with the National Farmers’ Union and properly run the figures.
Farmers drive tractors through Westminster in protest to inheritance tax changes to farms worth more than £1million in Labour’s Budget
A tractor in the convoy on Westminster Bridge bearing a sign reading ‘Stuck farmer’ in red and black letters
But what about Starmer, who was on GB News the other day proudly declaring that his first job was on a farm?
She rolls her eyes.
‘There’s a devastating lack of knowledge – Labour is too removed and London-centric. All this stuff about “working people”. You couldn’t have harder working people than farmers. They think all farmers are posh!’
They all think she’s very posh, too. She certainly seems it, with her crisp, clear voice, excellent posture and love of country sports.
But she’s always been Labour – she is the daughter and niece respectively of Labour MPs William and Lance Mallalieu – and her mother was a Labour councillor. And she is quick to point out that her great-grandfather set up the first trade union in Tyneside.
She grew up on a smallholding in Buckinghamshire, with a cow called Molly she milked before she went to school, and chickens and pigs.
Labour leader Michael Foot was her father’s best friend. Barbara Castle, Nye Bevan and his wife were regulars at their kitchen table, politics was always on the agenda and Ann went to the local state grammar – a few years before Theresa May.
‘We got our pigs from Nye. Jim Callaghan had a farm, too – there used to be a good Labour farming connection,’ she says.
She was always interested in politics, but initially pushed back against her parents.
‘When I was nine, I put up “Vote Tory” posters in the window – I’d done them in red lipstick,’ she laughs.
But by the time she was 16, she was a member of the Labour Party and speaking at election campaigns in Huddersfield and the Colne Valley.
Later, she canvassed as a student at Cambridge University, where she became the first-ever female president of the Cambridge Union Society, cut rather a swathe with her ash-blonde hair and corduroys and embraced the ratio of 16 men to every woman with great gusto.
‘It was fantastic! It was the Sixties – I was jolly lucky. I had lots of boyfriends. Lots and lots. And I behaved appallingly, but I had a wonderful time and didn’t do very well in my exams as a result, though I don’t regret it for a moment.’
She ended up a bit of an It-girl.
I’m not surprised. The young Ann sounds brilliant. Still is, nearly 60 years on with a dangerous glint in her eye.
There was an appearance with Roy Plomley on Desert Island Discs in 1968, in which she chose a four-poster bed as her luxury. ‘I’m not sure I’d choose that now!’
And a much-publicised marriage proposal from an anonymous millionaire. ‘A total nutter!’ she says cheerfully.
And then, after two unsuccessful attempts to stand as a Labour MP in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, she had a brilliant legal career after limbering up on those pornography cases with Mortimer QC.
‘I was his junior and he would make me go and watch all the films because he couldn’t bear it. If he had to, he’d take his glasses off so he couldn’t see anything.’
When she was 33, she married a fellow silk, the Baronet Sir Timothy Cassel. ‘I was in no hurry, but I was a bit surprised when a friend’s father said: “I wonder why you missed the marriage market, Ann.” ’
She had two daughters and, after years of longing, finally got her first flock of sheep.
They were divorced in 2006 and today she lives mostly in her smallholding on Exmoor where she batch-cooks fish pies that last her all week, tends her animals, is always busy – ‘I keep thinking, “When I’m old, I’ll read” – and rattles up and down to the House of Lords.
‘The worst bit is saying goodbye to the dogs,’ she says. ‘They go into decline when I put on different clothes, and I have to go and say how many sleeps it is until I’ll be back.’
All of which means that she knows a lot about our justice system and a lot about the countryside. And that makes her weep because, as she says, both have been the subject of ‘very, very damaging policies’ by Labour.
First, the slashing of the Legal Aid budget that began in the Blair era and has continued, she says, has resulted in more than 70,000 cases on the waiting list, and some sex cases taking three years to get to court. And of course his fox-hunting Bill. Because Ann adores trail hunting. ‘Where I live it’s like the local football match – everyone’s involved.’
But sadly not her, lately. Because earlier this year she was diagnosed with tongue cancer.
‘I always thought I was immortal so it was a bit of a shock,’ she says. ‘Endless tests. Teeth out. Ghastly tummy tubes. Lost two and a half stone. Couldn’t go hunting.
‘It was brutal treatment, but my local hospital was magnificent. And I’m not dead yet. I can run, I can jump and I’ve never had any bits replaced – so it must be good.’
And with that – because Ann is not the sort for self-pity – we flick back to the farmers and the mess Labour has made of things. ‘It has taken 14 years to win back those rural voters – and now they’ve blown it again,’ she says. ‘Those MPs are in an impossible position.’
Tractors with the message ‘Rachel Thieves’ drive past the Houses of Parliament in protest against the Chancellor’s IHT grab
The odd thing is, she says, is that when Sir Keir took over, he was very supportive of the Countryside Alliance. Desperate to keep the rural seats.
‘I had some very, very valuable conversations with him. They promised to help the farmers, and now here we are . . .’
She looks so fed up that I ask if she has ever thought of leaving the party?
‘Yes. Of course! Almost every day, yes,’ she cries.
‘I have grand reservations, but I don’t want to join any other party either. And we can’t just give up, can we?’
So, instead, she will continue to travel hundreds of miles to sit through endless debates in the House.
On top of which she is busy planning Christmas (all the family are coming), hopes to be back in the saddle for the Boxing Day hunt, and is doing anything and everything she can to help her beloved farmers.