Tory leader Kemi Badenoch met with Jeremy Clarkson yesterday morning before he addressed thousands of farmers in Westminster.
The former Top Gear star turned Home Counties farmer has brought the day-to-day struggles that British farmers face into the nation’s living rooms with his wildly successful TV series Clarkson’s Farm.
The Leader of the Opposition, speaking exclusively to GB News, said they’d had “a very good meeting”.
Clarkson “wanted to find out what the Conservatives were going to do about what Labour has done with the family farms tax.”
Kemi Badenoch rubs shoulders with Jeremy Clarkson as she ‘talks tactics’ to force Labour U-turn
PA/GB News
Badenoch stressed that the Tories have little say in what happens next.
She said: “I was explaining to him that we are the opposition now.
“We’re not the Government anymore. We don’t have the numbers to reverse it.”
However, she added that “we can hold them to account”.
Kemi Badenoch sat down with GB News’ Katherine Forster
GB news
Yesterday Clarkson spoke for over ten thousand farmers and their families gathered by Parliament in the biting cold and rain, (plus tens of thousands more around the country), urging the Government to “back down”.
The 64-year-old told Labour to “be big, accept this was rushed through, not properly thought out, a mistake, and back down”.
Farmers downed their tools to protest at the Labour Government’s Budget announcement that they would no longer be exempted from inheritance tax.
Instead, as of spring 2026, assets over £1million will be taxed at 20 per cent. A couple owning a farm jointly, with other allowances factored in, could pass on £3million tax-free, with the remainder payable over ten years, interest-free.
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Although Badenoch pointed out that “everyone needs to pay their fair share of tax” she agrees with those protesting yesterday: “This is not fair on farmers.”
She said farmers “are asset rich and they are cash poor”, adding the IHT raid is “really a way for the Government to take away from those who have assets”.
But she did try to reassure Clarkson, saying: “I talked about tactics which the farming community and rural communities, as well as everybody else in society who supports this campaign, can take in order to help to get a U-turn from Labour.”
However, farmers’ woes did not begin with the new Labour Government as just this March, tractors were driven into Westminster, with farmers protesting about red tape, net zero and how supermarkets squeeze them.
Badenoch admitted to GB News: “Farmers feel, and I agree with them, that they’ve been getting a rough deal for a long time.”
She continued by issuing a warning: “A lot of people are just going to give up and stop farming.
“And then what happens to our food security? Let’s remember what farmers do. This is public service. They may be privately owned, but without farmers, there is no food.”
