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The sign says it all. Carl Court/Getty Images
Capturing a glimpse of Napoleon at the head of his Grande Armée in 1806, Hegel described him as the world soul on horseback. Today, such figures do not appear in small German towns leading revolutionary armies, but on YouTube, Spotify and TikTok, carried aloft — and into our minds and souls — by the chaotic ranks of influencers, algorithms, podcasters and memesters shaping our world.
Donald Trump is no Napoleon, but he has captured the spirit of our age: America’s soul riding forth on X. It is hard to open any social media app today — pace Bluesky— and not be struck by the sense that something has shifted in the zeitgeist. The Right is winning and it’s becoming cool. A new epoch has begun. Where NFL players once took the knee, now they are doing the “Trump dance”, while UFC fighters bow to their great Caesar as he strides in the modern, fighting colosseums of today. Animal spirits have been released into the popular culture that are as powerful as they are unpredictable.
But what about those of us living outside America? There is no obvious British Joe Rogan or British Elon Musk today — the Horace and Crassus of our age. Perhaps that is because these men are just as powerful here as they are in the States. In fact, just as we have entered something of an economic depression these past 15 years, so too are we stuck in a cultural and ideological rut. To look at Britain today is to be struck by an overwhelming sense of quaint, platitudinous predictability: more poor Vienna than booming Austin. There is no British Musk because there is no British Silicon Valley; and there is no British Rogan, because there is almost no popular, home grown counter-cultural energy — not yet at least.
But down at the farmers’ protest an intriguing presence strides into view: Jeremy Clarkson. “Why are you here Mr Clarkson?” the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire demanded as he joined those protesting the Government’s decision to impose inheritance tax on family farms worth over £1 million. “Well, I’m here to support farmers,” he replied, without obvious hostility. Derbyshire, though, persisted. “This is not about you and your farm and the fact that you bought a farm to avoid inheritance tax?”
As Derbyshire pointed out, Clarkson had written as much in The Sunday Times. “Classic BBC,” Clarkson replied, with seemingly genuine exasperation. “You people.”
Clarkson then proceeded to deliver a message of clean popular fury more in tune with the spirit of the day than anything I have heard out of Westminster in years — not since Take Back Control anyway. “Okay, let’s start from the beginning,” Clarkson began. “I wanted to shoot… which came with the benefit of not paying inheritance tax. Now I do. But people like me will put it in a trust and as long as I live for seven years that’s fine. But why should all these people do that?”
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SubscribeAs long as people face jail for mean tweets, there will never be a British Rogan. I’m surprised Russell Brand is still a free man, though there was a concerted effort to change that some time back.
Also, for all the slow people who refuse to catch on – stop fixating on the likes of Trump and Clarkson, and instead ask why they exist. Why are people listening to them? Why do they have traction? In both cases, it’s due to the combination of incompetence and malfeasance that pervade DC and Westminster. What is with the left and its inabilty/refusal to see obvious points?
Jeremy Clarkson for prime minister! “How hard can it be?” We need more speed and power in Westminister
Whilst Tom refers to Old Britain, I believe it is the yeoman of England who are rising. Long repressed through assymetrical devolution, I see a determination to reassert themselves after a prolongued period of dislocation. As we move through the 4th turning and order is asserted over chaos, this reassertion will be central in the 80 year overhaul of the governing system.
Plenty of Welsh farmers went to London yesterday. Why switch from British to English, which is just shallow and divisive?
I doubt Susan intended it that way.
One thinks of the Welsh bowmen who helped win the Battle of Agincourt, and we’re on the right lines here.
I’m still waiting for the first headline warning of “Farmergedden”
Starmergedden – boom, boom!
One feature which makes Clarkson accessible is that he’s not a graduate. The present trend of having graduates in key jobs clearly doesn’t work. Graduates may be able to talk but they don’t have the right experience for power. How about a rule for the next election that all parties must have a maximum of 50% graduates in their candidates list?
You can see the problem in the Labour front benches – plenty of theories but no common sense.
They are (whisper it) even more mediocre than the Tories.
Do you have a degree, Caradog?
No.
Obviously.
So what ? Anyone can get a degree these days. No guarantee of anything. In Clarkson’s youth, only the top 15% made it. These days it’s 50% (and not necessarily the top 50% – some of whom are smart enough to know it’s not worth it).
I’m guessing you have a degree. And that – if true – will rather prove my point.
Clarkson and Farage need to have a conversation.
Clarkson doesn’t have good health. A non-starter for the future, although good for the present.
It is already happening!
Can anyone else see the double perversion at play here?
Brexit as it stands today, ie, botched, has not reduced hyper regulation and higher associated costs. It has not prevented international businesses unburdened with these obligations to compete in the UK national market.
We have gone from bad (EU) to disastrous state market distortions in less than 8 years.
Furthermore, the state, having made itself king maker as far as energy policy is concerned, has been consistently incompetent, outdoing even Germany, which takes some doing.We have the highest energy costs in the world.
Add to this rampant inflation since 2020, and bad weather over the last 2 seasons, the timing could not be worse of course. Most of these businesses struggle to make a profit. They are already in survival mode as things stand.
Should you subscribe to the notion that everyone should pay tax, and that there is no reason to particularly favour one group or the other, fine. Fair point. However, common sense, decency even, would dictate that first and foremost you deregulate massively and allow these businesses to pay the tax from earnings and not from forced asset sales.
And on to the second perversion, whilst on the subject of tax. Consent to taxation is on the premise that the state guarantees security. Our armed forces, our police, our judiciary have never been so weak and dysfunctional (whilst our overall taxation has never been so high) Weak with the strong, strong against the weak.
Can there be a better example of insecurity when the PM swears that he is not going to change IHT only a few months ago to then apply it without even doing an impact assessment?
All the private actors of the UK economy have been lied to. Aside from emotive reactions, Labour have lit a neon sign warning not to invest in these shores. Farmers have every right to feel aggrieved.
They are part of a much wider coalition than they realise. This is not going to end well.
Brexit never stood a chance. The EU & the many & powerful enemies within made damn sure of that.
Everyone who touches the food you eat is dramatically underpaid, quite literally competing against an entire globe of people to be the ones to put food into your mouth. It’s the tragedy of necessities: the more something is needed, the more something is supplied, the greater the competition, the lower the compensation. Those who perform the most important work on the globe are paid the worst.
The BBC is a bloated, unaccountable propaganda operation that has long outlived its privileged existence as chiefly funded by taxation. It is out of touch most of its audience and is staffed by Left-Wing Woking Class Oxbridge elites who despise the majority ‘populists’ whose common sense and decency is subjected to sneers and condescension.
Defund the BBC!
One struggle, brothers and sisters. If you stood with the farmers in India, then stand with the farmers in Britain. If you regret the defeat of the miners, then stand fast against the defeat of the farmers on the same principles. Resist Peter Mandelson’s lobbying for the retention of leasehold, and resist his little fanboys’ ruse to drive families off the land in favour of the same interests. Remember what Kemi Badenoch did to the farmers when she was Trade Secretary, remember that Nigel Farage consistently voted against help for small farmers when he was a Member of the European Parliament, and remember that Jeremy Clarkson openly bought his farm to avoid inheritance tax on the money that he had largely been paid by the BBC. Do not let them deceive you into giving ammunition to the rest of the Establishment.
And insist on, not least by being, better voices against a Government in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had falsely claimed that her “business occupation” was an economist when signing a legal document to become a director of a charity. Even against the background of a World War, the only way that Rachel Reeves could possibly still be in office is that there is absolutely no one else.
Remember that Victoria Derbyshire’s career has been based on breaking up Fi Glover’s marriage.
Fi Glover? I had to look her up, but I am still none the wiser.
VD had an affair with Fi Glover’s husband apparently
Did Fi Glover catch VD then?
Presumably because she divorced
“And yet he has become new by remaining still”
I think that might be why Clarkson has remained relevant. For all his failings and there are many I’m sure, he is true to himself. He feels like the genuine article. And that feeling goes an awfully long way with people. Now you may not like him, but you know what he represents.
Put him up against our current PM (or any of the Labour cabinet) and the contrast is quite striking. Does he feel genuine?
It would appear not. His lawyer like handling of key events have already shown his willingness to use misdirection and obfuscation as tools to get the outcome he requires. That will work in the short term. But will definitely hurt in time.
Oddly we were told that Clarkson was the dinosaur, a beast out of time. Weirdly he appears completely of the moment. Which tells you so much about the dead end that progressive politics has driven itself into.
I’m quite enjoying watching the list of Starmer’s nicknames get longer from my vantage point in quaint, predictable, platitudinous rich Vienna:
Two-Tier Keir
Free Gear Keir
Starmer the Farmer Harmer
What’s next?
You forgot “Kier Starmer granny harmer”
No idea?
No Idea Keir!
Hopefully before too long – No Career Keir or No Longer Here Keir
Very good!
Keir today, gone tomorrow?
If only……
Out On Your Ear Keir
How about Keir Mugabe
Gap year Kier.
Gear from peer kier
Frozen in fear kier
Korma beer kier
Freedom of Speech From Here – – – > To Here Keir.
Go on – I’ll do it.
As fun as it might be it is hard to avoid that a lot of the noise is being made by those with an interest. Nothing of course is wrong with that per se. But it doesn’t get around the problem that KS or any other politician for that matter would face. For 14 years the Conservatives mistook, ‘cutting budgets,’ for, ‘rolling back the state,’ and it’s left a real mess. None of this, to be clear, is to say that I necessarily think that KS is best-placed to deal with it. But at some stage it has to get a bit more serious than name-calling.
For example, on the winter fuel payment, KS and RR are 100% correct and they are simply doing what prior Conservative PMs were too craven and cowardly to do. We are not in a position to be spending (well, borrowing to be specific) billions to throw no-questions-asked cheques through the doors of some of the wealthiest people in society. I really don’t understand why that is seen as contentious.
Indeed it has been interesting to see in some online comment about the farmers that there is at least an undercurrent of opinion that there is more than one side to the story as far as farming goes.
Now – of course I’m not saying that it’s easy. Kemi ‘shoot from the hip’ Badenoch has not exactly been forthright about what she thinks the tough choices are. The one person who it seemed to me was prepared to talk seriously was oddly staid old Theresa May – and as soon as she did so everyone wet the collective bed.
There’s all the usual talkboard favourites of course – BBC, DEI, foreign adventures and aid etc. True of course, but that will only ever go so far. If anything there is an argument that the WFP and the farm IHT changes are just lightening rods for what is no more than tinkering at the edges.
But it does feel at the moment like a lot of people are talking a good tough choices game without much wanting to play it. I suggest starting with the triple lock.
Or, how about ceasing to shovel ever more obscene amounts of cash into the ever widening maw of the NHS & the vast, useless bureaucracies beloved of government, rather than throttling the life out of anyone they can grab hold of, anyone attempting to make a living for themselves?? Hmmm??
We only have the government’s word on it via mainstream media propaganda that our public services are crumbling. Is crumbling an accurate word to describe the entirety of our public sector. Of course it isn’t. Perhaps very small fractions of it are crumbling but the rest is working as it should in its human fallable way.
The word crumbling is misdirection from migration led population growth and the fact that the public sector needs to expand except nobody voted for migration led population growth. Only the corporates. Another small fraction but this time of the electorate.
So what is craven and cowardly is the fact that Labour are as usual lying to the rest of us.
Starmerde?
Insincere Two tier keir with the free gear from the queer peer
Now that’s just showing off.
Kier. Hardly…
Fantastic!
Never here Kier
For fun, go to X and search for Keir Wrong Un @wef_uk. It’s a brilliant spoof, and is good for getting Keir out of your Hair.
Farmers, not Starmers?
Just as Trump hit on a central truth with his admission of tax avoidance — an honest lie as Chapelle put it
In what sense is this a lie at all, let alone “an honest lie”?
More like a malicious truth.
“…It is elemental: an expression of an old, almost forgotten Toryism…other expressions of Toryism too: inheritance, obviously, but also questions of conservation and an instinctive opposition to a distant, bureaucratic state…genuine hatred of centralisation, bureaucracy and every manifestation of the Benthamite state…”
These sentences somehow dragged back from the depths of memory, a Tom Sharpe satire I read in late seventies called ‘The Throwback’. I will make an effort to locate this novel and reread it.
Smash the gangs not the farmers
The gangs and the lawyers …
Excellent essay.
Fabulous. Just fabulous Tom. And Jeremy.
It’s beginning to be clear that the people need genuine representation, which is not the government.
Great comment.
But what is? All my life I’ve heard people blaming governments. But what is the alternative and how do we get there?
Powerful, inspirational individuals.
I agree. JC isn’t a healthy person. BJ is a character but not really so likeable. NF is a go-getter but hated by many. How do you find the leaders?
Our whole system is based on NOT having inspirational leaders. Indeed the last one might have been Thatcher but she was so inspiring that we went to war with Argentina. Part of the psyche of the British is to try to be a victim or an underdog. So an inspirational leader becomes someone to hate because ‘they think themselves better than anyone else’. Nigel Farage being a good example.
“… but she was so inspiring that we went to war with Argentina.”
Part of our territory had been invaded. What would you have done?
I took that as a compliment of Mrs T. The last inspiring leader we had.
Er, I think you’ll find it was the fascist junta running Argentina that ‘went to war’ with us.
Indeed – dictators; that’s worked well then!
It’s easy to jeer at autocrats given some of the more recent examples in European history. Hitler’s legacy is, among other things, to poison an entire civilization against autocratic, personal, inspirational leadership styles in favor of the bland, sterilized, consensus based, and above all safe collaborative bureaucratic government style of today. Because Hitler was a monster, we have CEOs and managers instead of true leaders, never you mind that he was defeated by two other leaders using the same style, Stalin and FDR. Because we all have living memories of dictators who did truly horrible things, we assume they are all like that, hence the hyperbolic reaction over Trump from certain quarters, particularly intellectuals. They equate all autocrats with the likes of Hitler, but Trump is not Hitler. He has his faults. They are many and well documented, but to assume he would be as destructive as that is simply irrational. There is no logical evidence based reason from history to assume that all powerful monarchs are necessarily destructive. We forget that we occupy just a tiny fraction of history.
A more even handed consideration of history would be more informative. Napoleon, while a conqueror, brought relative stability to revolutionary France and instituted many policies and reforms that nearly every other European state eventually or immediately copied. I would go so far as to call Napoleon the father of the modern nation state. Going back further, most of the rulers whose names we remember, Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great, Peter the Great, Louis XIV, Frederick the Great, and so on all the way back to the Roman imperial period, had a wide range of reputations from good to bad, but all had two things in common. First, they concentrated power into themselves and lessened the power of whatever ruling class was below them. Second, they tended to accomplish things that weaker rulers could not. These are naturally related to each other.
Wherever they exist, ruling aristocrat classes tend to gather generational wealth and power to themselves. They come about because in any civilization, some individuals will be more successful than others, either as a result of their own merits or familial advantage. Even today, in our supposedly meritocratic societies, the most predictive factor in a person’s success is the socioeconomic status of the family they were born into. That power tends to accumulate over time in any given social system, sometimes slowly and sometimes frighteningly quickly. The children of aristocrats have greater levels of achievement, which feed into the next generation, and so on. It is a self-reinforcing system that tends to ossify social systems and entire civilizations. Those who enjoy power and wealth in any given social scheme tend to favor the continuance of the conditions that allowed them to be successful in the first place, even when technology or social factors make change desirable from a civilizational perspective. A powerful force is needed to overcome the systemic inertia imposed by aristocratic classes.
Traditionally, powerful monarchs, emperors, and other autocrats are one of the few ways to accomplish this purpose. They are the most common, and, modern examples notwithstanding, tend to cause the least destruction. This is not because autocracy represents some powerful ideal governmental scheme, but because during difficult times when significant change is needed but blocked by powerful entrenched aristocrats, the alternatives to autocracy, revolution, civil conflict, division of the nation, and civilizational collapse, are nearly always far more destructive. Through their individual political skill, the force of their personality, their ability to harness the civic pride of their people, or some other factor, they are able to outmaneuver the aristocrats and/or browbeat them into submission. Great leaders find ways to accomplish things that advance the national interest, often at the direct expense of an ossified and oppositional aristocracy. They serve as catalysts for needed change during times of stagnation.
So yes, this is a time when we need ‘dictators’ or at least men who lead with the force of their personality and will to overcome the entrenched interests of aristocrats. It is the most obvious and direct way to accomplish change. The American system as it currently exists is well suited to allow such individuals to rise to power over aristocratic objections. See the rise of Trump. As I have always stated, the alternative to Trump isn’t just more aristocratic globalist rule, it’s another different Trump somewhere down the line. The American system is almost guaranteed to produce such a transformational figure given the right conditions. In Europe, I fear things will be far more difficult.
I would suggest you could characterise Trump as the dictator that people wanted.
Indeed. I dislike Trump personally and would have preferred a number of other populist/reformer figures on both sides of the aisle. I honestly believe a more even handed and inspirational figure, someone more like FDR, someone with a clear plan and a set of strategies to execute it, someone who wasn’t quite so chaotic, combative, and confrontational, could have captured an even greater popular mandate. Then again, maybe I’m wrong and that approach wouldn’t have worked given the technology and the conditions.
Either way, my opinion is no more important than anybody else’s. A lot of people were angrier than I was and his approach resonated with that anger and that proved greater than the support for the old establishment. It’s impossible for anyone to contest the election result this time. Trump is a known quantity with an established record and the opposition fired everything they had at him and the people chose him in a decisive way. I won’t deny it on account of my personal opinions.
Excellent analysis. Your analysis highlights that we always need to keep all adaptive options on the table. Keep an open mind to different governance styles.
Progressives seek the opposite because they instinctively know, as you aptly highlight, that a different governance style is key to toppling their Woke Panopticon and a mixture of traditionalism and populism might just be it. Common sense versus social justice. Wisdom versus Equality.
I appreciate your thoughtful response but I will debate it in the same respectful spirit!
What stood out was your combination of Stalin and FDR: Stalin was a monster who killed millions, while FDR spent his time mostly working for the public good – and was a democratically elected leader constrained by the system not a dictator. Napoleon did indeed accomplish much in the way of legal reform, but I am in the camp which considers him a war-monger responsible for the death of millions and misery for countless millions more, drunk on his own power and nepotistic to an extreme.
Of course there have been successful autocrats over the millennia, as a combination of hereditary and personal factors along with the luck to be in the right place at the right time will have inevitably thrown up ‘good’ and strong leaders, but overall I posit that they are in a minority, certainly looking at English monarchs anyway. And democratic societies have only really been around for c.150 years at the most (USA a bit longer but not universal suffrage until recently and seriously manipulated by the oligarchs) so comparison with millennia of autocrats is somewhat dubious.
On the continuation of power by the ‘aristocratic’ classes, which one assumes includes those chosen by wealth. It is an understandable and natural human trait to do the best for one’s children, and that will skew the meritocracy in favour of existing wealth and power. But your argument about that being crucial falls down in the UK (I can’t comment about elsewhere) when you look at the Labour party in government: leaders have been Wilson/Callaghan, Blair/Brown/Prescott, Starmer/Rayner – all from ‘working class backgrounds (Blair one generation off). Tories obviously rather different.
“…the alternatives to autocracy, revolution, civil conflict, division of the nation, and civilizational collapse, are nearly always far more destructive.” Really? Have you looked around the conflicts in the world? How many have been started recently by democratically driven states? The USA hasn’t got a great record in that respect of course, but you seem to think that their system is jolly good as it has just chosen a dictator.
We do want ‘strong’ leaders of course, but if you allow them to choose themselves they are rather more likely to work for themselves than their society’s benefit.
First off, I did realize the contrast between Stalin and FDR. My overall point was that some dictators are good and some are bad, and here we have exactly that. One was awful and one was good, but it took both of them to defeat Hitler who was worse. Although FDR was not an autocrat in the truest sense of the word, he wielded nearly equivalent power on account of his popularity and political skill. This is obviously the form I would prefer, and it’s a tradition that does go back further than the couple of centuries you mentioned. The Roman Republic was in many ways very similar to the early US and Roman citizens did vote. Over time, the government was captured by a powerful cadre of ultra wealthy aristocrats who built their fortunes upon Rome’s successful transition from rising power to regional hegemon. Sound familiar yet? The conditions were ripe for a change and it came in the form of Julius Caesar, whose political party, the populares, is where we derive the term populism. He opposed the aristocrats and was supported by the people. Through his skill as a general and his political acumen, he eventually defeated them. Even after he was killed, his nephew picked up the baton and finished the job. From that point, Rome was ruled by emperors. While they were never elected as we understand the term, they were accountable in the fact that the mob had to be appeased or someone else would rally the people against the current Emperor just as Caesar had. The Empire enjoyed several hundred more years of success and prosperity despite this seemingly chaotic system. It wasn’t perfect, or even good, but it held Rome together and effectively limited the power of wealthy elites.
Finally, I’ll make a point to say that the personal background of those leaders you mentioned is quite irrelevant. It has never been difficult for powerful people to put forth puppets to do their will for various reasons. If a politician who grew up poor nevertheless embraces the policies and positions that support the wealthy elites and present an obstacle to change, he is no less a problem for the sake of his humble birth. The idea that his humble beginnings should somehow excuse his conduct and governance seems absurd to me.
At any rate, the thread is getting a bit old so this will be my last response, but thank you for the spirited debate. It is by such disagreements and debates that we improve ourselves. It is by allowing all ideas to be heard and understood that we expand our understanding of the world and of each other. None of us has a monopoly on truth or wisdom.
My view is that the party political system has created the detachment between politicians and the electorate. When you have Reeves (from London) in a safe Leeds seat, Millibean (of London) in Doncaster, and the historic holding of Hartlepool by Mandelson, South Shields for Millipede, etc. and on the other side Sunak (of Southampton) in Yorkshire, etc. we are ruled by elites who don’t fundamentally understand their constituents. Moreover when party comes first, then self, and then your constituents, the disconnect becomes very wide. Government isn’t the problem per se it’s the detachment – both geographically and philosophically- between the electorate and the various parties.
No taxation without representation, it was said.
Look where that got the British Government of the day.
The farmers are being taxed without any credible representation in Government. I wonder where this will end?
Author gives some wise advice there to Starmer et al – populism can steal a march on you when in Opposition, (although it struggles much more when it has to make real choices and deliver effective Government).
As regards the specifics – finally paying a tax the rest of us have to if we have such value in our assets, albeit at a much lower rate and with many more years to pay it, is not at all unreasonable. The lack of such a tax on unearned income has pushed up land values, and thus may actually make acquiring a farm easier for tenant farmers. Too much of this debate is framed by media Barons who intriguingly have often also purchased land as investment. Nonetheless Author’s caution has validity regardless of the merits of the case.
The underlying issue is the case for public goods funded by public subscription. Taxes and benefits are too often framed as things that industrious people feed into a system for lazy people to draw out. It should be much less ‘I subsidise them’, and more ‘we provide for each other and ourselves’. There will of course always be some ‘lazy’ and of course there will be some rich whose advantage had little to do with their own endeavour. The extremes should not determine the societal benefit of us making our contribution because it is in our own collective interest. Nobody gets to enjoy the benefits of financial security if society fractures, decays and falls apart. There is a limit to how much living in a gated community might insulate if outside society has broken down.
Labour need to find a narrative that gets across things like the NHS are a ‘crowd-funded’ solution for all of us and work on this basic understanding. It’s the key debate for our times.
Starmer (and the BBC) will be unable to use “funding the NHS” as a go-to diversion designed to camouflage their poor financial decisions for much longer. More people than ever are realising the scale of waste and inefficiency of the NHS, and it will soon be as unpopular in the public realm as the BBC is becoming.
It would be quite easy for the Treasury to remove the IHT loophole which benefits the likes from Clarkson et al.Such people will remain unaffected because the have the time, money and resources to find ways to continue to avoid it.
And yes, it has contributed to land value increases but land being purchased for carbon-offsetting schemes and solar farms has also pushed up the price.
This change will not reduce land value because the big agri businesses etc will be there to buy up these farms, thereby removing small and medium sized farms. One has other wonder why Bill Gates was in No.10 just weeks before the budget and what Starmer promised him? He does have form in this area.
Finally it is not up to any of us to “save” the NHS. The NHS should be there to benefit us, not the other way around. That is the conversation we should be having.
You still haven’t explained to us why farmers, working people and small businesses are required to bail the country out while you and every other suburban property owner continue to collect additional tens or hundreds of £thousands of entirely unearned wealth every single year with no intervention by the state at all.
Well of course Inheritance tax applies to everyone, except Farmers at the moment, HB for assets over £325k, and thus taxman takes a share when we die if we live in property of much greater value. I’m therefore not certain what you are suggesting as a Policy response to asset wealth accumulation. Lower Inheritance tax threshold, higher rate etc ? What’s your thought?
It’s pretty simple really. Council tax surcharge in Surbiton. Proceeds go to Rotherham.
In theory already some balancing with then what grants different LAs get, but that can become a bit of a ‘pork barrel’ process. Nonetheless the redistribution essence you imply I agree with
Charge capital gains tax (maybe at 5%) on main property capital gains. The middle class aren’t going to like it especially in London and the SE, but some people are never going to be able to own a property especially increasingly young people. It might have the additional benefit of concentrating the minds of urban property owning lefties as to how they have benefited from the market system.
Your analysis breaks down because, predictably (if you’ll forgive me), you ignore the immutability of human nature. The state bloats over time, becoming wasteful and inefficient as its failures are rewarded equally to any successes. The key debate for our times is at what point do we say “enough already”.
I think something in your point. Same of course for certain v large corporations esp if they get to a monopolistic position. Of course the latter then needs State intervention. These things are complex.
Agreed, but the fact that corporate entities form monopolies so easily is another example of state sector failure.
Clarkson a man who said those on strike should be shot in front of their families and who only got a farm to dodge inheritance tax. National hero eh? A man who wouldn’t know a hard days work if it hit him in the face
You’re right, of course, Clarkson is very lazy.
He is only a self-made multi-millionaire who invented a whole TV format and has made three international hit TV series whist being the highest paid newspaper columnist. And he did so without losing touch with normal people and disappearing into those woke ivory towers that are so beloved by celebrities.
Whilst you are commenting on a website during office hours. You must be much more hardworking than Jeremy.
And this is the problem with British people. A self-made man, a character, a likeable rogue, somebody who is different from the norm – does not deserve respect because he is not part of the boring, tedious, useless, overqualified class of individuals who run the country today.
Two-Tier Keir – the brilliant barrister with the character of a lettuce, Rachel Reeves – the studious economist who isn’t an economist, etc, are telling us what is good for us. They don’t have a clue. They have political theories close to communism and they rule by theory.
Brilliant barrister ? Surely some mistake …
” Liz Truss, remember, is held in open disdain by farmers — not for the insanity of her “mini budget”, but for the content of her free trade deals with New Zealand and Australia.”
And here lies the crux of the matter, our Farmers expect subsidies and grants to go on for ever .. this is not sustainable or good for farmers and taxpayers.
New Zealand farmers had grants & subsidies withdrawn in 1984 and their industry has become a major NZ exporter.
UK farming needs radical change to free themselves of govt grants and subsidies and make their industry a major exporter.
https://www.cato.org/free-society/summer-2024/freedom-farm-lessons-new-zealand
Does New Zealand have the same amount of regulations in respect of its agriculture as the UK?
Jeremy Clarkson is good value on TV .. a ‘Jack the Lad ‘ but that’s it .. attention to the facts is not his bag!
Clarkson’s response to the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire question about who should pay for the NHS if not farmers, should have been as follows.
I’m sure as a long-time BBC employee, Jeremy Clarkson could helpfully suggest areas of the BBC to cut. I’d start with the unwatched and unwatchable Newsnight.
Excellent comment!
Good suggestion. I had not registered the BBC cost so much to produce so little of quality that can’t be produced without cost to the taxpayer. I watch almost nothing that the BBC didn’t produce a decade or more ago.
Firstly, if you want to watch interesting stuff try BBC4. Secondly, try listening – there is so much really good stuff on BBC Sounds, frankly worth the license fee on its own (just as well as I hardly watch TV).
I agree with your comment. To be more specific, BBC revenue is £5bn+, of which around £3.8bn is from the licence fee. TV programmes cost c. £1.75bn and radio c.£0.5bn. It certainly puts the IHT gain into context.
They could get rid of:
TV
BBC 3 – £95M
BBC 4 – £21M
and shave 10% off
BBC 1 – saving £120M
BBC 2 – saving £34M
Then they could get rid of:
Radio
Radio 1, Radio 2, 6 Music (do we really need publicly funded pop music channels? Surely the private sector can easily provide equivalents) – saving £103M
And also 5Live and 5 Live extra (again the private sector can cover sports radio) – saving £55M
And finally
1xtra – £10M
4 extra – £3M
Asian Network – £7M
That would save £515M per year. Enough to save all of Britain’s family farms and would anyone notice the loss of these services after the first 5 minutes of protest?
Not BBC 6 Music!!!!! It’s may favourite radio channel and thankfully all about the music and mostly devoid of politics. It’s not a pop music channel, it’s a music channel for music lovers and definitely in the BBc remit
It could easily be replicated by a commercial station. Indeed isn’t XFM basically the same thing (apologies I haven’t listened to either station for many years).
I suspect that there’s a chunk of BBC income that comes from continuing royalties from Top Gear (the Clarkson years).
Spot on, Sir!!
There’s a tee-shirt with Jezza as Che Guevara, including the beret, online somewhere. I might get one.
Bravo. None of this is new. Just the gadgets and rech. The emergence of liberty once again.
While I am of course instinctively on-side with Clarkson and the farmers, it still has to be said that there’s a serious problem with broad public support for the sorts of measures that the UK farming industry wants right now.
The main one is protectionism and prices: Jeremy Clarkson will get a million upticks on social media for promoting farming issues and highlighting the increasingly difficult lives farmers often find themselves with, but that won’t affect the weekly household budget in millions of homes in Britain, and it won’t make those budgets any more amenable to higher food prices. To push for policies that increase food prices during the cost of living crisis was an obvious non-starter, but really at any time it is stupid thing to expect to get away with.
Like it or not, Britain’s relative openness to global trade has hugely improved living standards through falling prices, and there is no obvious way of reversing this trend without a concomitant fall in living standards. Farmers have no more right to expect the rest of us to put with such a thing than anyone else.
However, I do also accept that the farming industry should be regarded as a strategic asset the domestic capacity of which should not be threatened. The answer, it seems to me, is to get rid of the stupid raft of post-Brexit measures that treat farmers as squatters on otherwise supposedly pristine natural habitats, and instead create a UK version of the EU’s CAP – direct production subsidies that permit UK farmers to compete on price with cheap imports. That way we can keep the cheap imports thus preserving consumer variety and supply-chain stability, but keep the UK farming industry healthy. Either way, and this is where I’m in 100% agreement with Clarkson, the ludicrous bureaucratised pettifogging stupidity that farmers have to endure from the government is a disgrace and an offence to decency. It has to stop, and be replaced by a sane system that actually recognises that farmers are human beings and not the end of a chain of pointless command that saves government bureaucrats from actually getting their hands dirty.
Oh, and of course get rid of this dementedly stupid IHT raid. If you’re worried about rich people buying farms to avoid IHT, stop playing whack-a-mole with the tax system, then clever and resourceful people won’t have to resort to such strategies in the first place.
Get rid of IHT. The Swedes did and no harm done so far as I read.
Clarkson’s dour expression yesterday reflected his plummeting standing among the public. And all done by his own hand. Unlike his wealth which owes much. to contributions made by others. A suitable standard bearer for the vain and ungrateful rich.
Remember too that Clarkson was voted Britain’s sexiest man. Did his avowed aversion to progressive B.S. have anything to do with that I wonder?
“[Disraeli] felt the sort of reverence that Burke had had for the many independent corporations and institutions which, however odd and anomalous, however contrary to the abstract symmetry, to what Burke called the ‘geometrical theories’, were the true bulwarks of English liberty,”
Absolutely right and Blair used the weasel word “transparency”, “accountability”, “diversity” and “equality” to disarm and then seize control of them
You say “The Right is winning and it’s becoming cool.”
Historically, the Right has never won. There have had some periods where they have been less unpopular than usual, but they have eventually lost every battle. If they had won, we’d still be burning heretics, hanging people, allowing the poor to die, and we would have few of the benefits of scientific medicine.
When did we we allow the poor to die? The sick poor wer3 always looked after, either first by nuns or by the great charity hospitals.
Right and Left are very modern concepts, post WW1 really. Conservative and Liberal, formerly Tory and Whig, evolved into Conservative Unionist and Radical/Liberal. Both groupings have always recognised and embraced change, right up to 1914, albeit led by the Liberals – Thatcherite Whigs, you might say!
Then after confusion and chaos in the interwar years, the Conservatives gradually promoted careful moderate change, the Liberals became the silly party, and Labour, after a period of radicalism, and then the cautious modernisation of Blairism, have become ultra conservative, none more so than these class warriors full of spite and jealousy. They are a serious menace to the UK’s survival now.
Your comment completely misses any target and lacks any sense.
hyperbole like that is why the left lost in the US, that and its own miserable performance. It’s why the left in the UK is there following a vote of protest for the Tories being no better, not an affirmation of Labor. And the only people advocating violence toward their opponents are the Left. They comprise antifa, the pro-Hamas mobs, the people toppling statues and declaring everything in history either racist or colonialist, and the enviro people defacing artworks. All birds of the same plumage.
Most people live a completely normal life. They need something to eat, a home, a job, and to enjoy life. Interestingly, the elites don’t care about that at all. That’s why they don’t understand why someone who doesn’t want to pay inheritance tax and admits it isn’t immediately torn apart. Quite simply, everyone tries to avoid paying taxes, and ordinary people have no problem with that. But a mendacious hyper-moral elite would never admit it.
Very good.
Clarkson as the first Reform peer in The Upper House will be the final nail in Tory and Labour coffins
So Uncle Don (nee Ron) and Dr Strangelove in the US, the diminutive Emperor, Emmanuel, in France, Jezza Bull and Catherine, Princess of Wales in Blighty…and the siren, Giorgia Meloni, who could yet be the face that launches a thousand missiles…
I miss Nick Clegg.
Great piece, with a wonderful image of Napoleon at the outset. The breadth of the inversion of the West into the ideology of the former Soviet Union or Maoism, and our visceral reaction against it, is perhaps underplayed?
Farm subsidies exist to keep food affordable and local (because one never knows when imports will be disrupted). A hungry electorate, like a hungry peasantry of old, is bad for those in charge.
How lavish they are, and how onerous the strings attached, is open to discussion.
Inheritance tax relief for owner operated farms makes sense. Landlords and hobbyist like Jeremy, should be subject to pretty close scrutiny before relief is granted, if at all.
That said, I am a fan of Clarkson and his worldview.
I’m very much behind the farmers but they’re wrong about trade deals. We import over 40% of our food and there is little we can do to improve that without going back to huge fields of monoculture and overuse of fertilisers. So as we’re going to be importing lots of food it doesn’t make sense to make it unnecessarily expensive for consumers by applying tariffs and quotas. British farmers can still sell all they can grow or rear as premium, home-grown produce.
Labour is the party of North London luvvies and grooming gangs. Someone has to represent them, Sir Keir.
For the rest of us, there must be something better.
There must be an awful lot of luvvies and groomers to give Starmer a 174 seat majority!!!
For you, there is nothing better. Just the swivel eyed loons of Reform and the Tory crooks and liars. Better move to North London and get grooming!
On another note, Clarkson looks absolutely horrendous. His recent health issues have obviously taken a big toll on him. Maybe time to cut back on the booze and fags…
If you haven’t anything relevant or constructive to say then perhaps stay under your bridge. You’re getting very tiresome and frankly pathetic.
Clarkson provided a compelling (and often moving) narrative about farmers and farming. This is where he is closest to Trump, who also provides a narrative. The fact that the medium differs, as does the story, doesn’t matter all that much.
Two days and a comment I made is still out there in the wilderness.
Labour should fear Tory Populism whatever its source as it strikes a visceral chord with so many of all social classes, especially as this government seems to be living on a different planet and displaying little humanity or connection.
“Labour should fear his instinctive Toryism”
A shame the Tories don’t have it. Vote Reform.
Once family farms have to be sold off or reduced in size because of inheritance tax, there is the threat that these farms will be bought by huge agribusinesses who will industrialise the land and continue the increase in environmental problems. Or housing developers may circle in. Family farmers who have lived on the land for generations do not usually want to turn it into an agricultural desert or a housing estate. To be fair, many family farms are already trusts.
And again, without the support of subsidies to pay for running costs, the returns for farmers are perilously low and always have been. And we the consumers would face a massive increase in prices if the market was allowed to work in their favour. Their asset is the land which will be valued more by the taxman than the income from their produce. In a labour government the old prejudice against landowners is still there.
I hope the farmers succeed. It’s time the political class had a wake up call.
Clarkson’s joyous response on tax minimisation reminds me of an occasion when Kerry Packer, Australia’s richest man at the time, was called before a Senate committee on some pretext or other. He was eventually tasked with tax minimisation by, I think, the leader of (ironically) the Australian Democrats. His response became famous:
“Believe me, what you do with it is not so clever that I should give you a penny more than I have to.”
Words for the ages.
Are British farmers stupid enough to put their faith in a loudmouth in dad jeans who literally said that he only bought his farm to avoid inheritance tax?
If they are then they deserve the same fate as the mugs in the US who voted for Trump and are about to see massive cuts in public services to fund tax cuts for the uber wealthy.
Sigh. It seems like people are determined to make the same mistakes over and over again just because they have been convinced to be afraid of immigrants and trans kids.
Ugh
Oh dear, someone’s been triggered.
The champagne any good, mr. Socialist??
How empty must your life be if you want to pay good money to subscribe to a website whose articles you have no interest in, just to post antagonistic nonsensical comments in an attempt to annoy some people you’ll never meet?
Get help. Don’t wait. Call someone now.
This is the same sort of idiotic ad hom attack that Victoria Derbyshire tried and failed with.
The fact that he isn’t a typical farmer doesn’t mean he can’t understand and speak out for typical, less well off family farmers who he knows. After all, Keir Starmer claims to represent “working people”, though it’s far from clear he’s one under whatever this week’s definition of a “working person is”.
The fact that he may (or may not) have initially bought his farm partly as a financial investment, doesn’t mean that his priorities can’t have changed later as he decided to actually get hands on with real farming.
The fact that you can’t actually engage with real people who don’t actually behave according to your cartoon stereotypes says everything about you and nothing at all about Jeremy Clarkson.
I don’t know what the whataboutery about immigration and trans is all about.
Honestly, get a life.
Champagne Socialist is the real deal except only 20% (and rapidly falling) of the voting electorate agree with you.
80% of the voting population don’t want migration led population growth and consequently they don’t want to be taxed more in order to expand the public sector to accommodate migration led population growth.
In a world with finite resources, unlimited growth is a perilous illusion. We need bold, transformative change: drastically reducing overconsumption and waste, especially by the affluent, stabilizing and gradually reducing the human population through empowering education and rights for girls and women, reforming food production systems to support more plant-based eating, and adopting an ecological and post-growth economics framework that ensures social justice (Table S4).
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biae087/7808595?login=false
Migration led population into affluent countries is slowly but surely destroying the planet due to overconsumption and waste. Meanwhile Champagne Socialists wants to build 1.5 million houses on farmland to accommodate this increasing overconsumption and waste.
Why not buy a farm to avoid what is a fundamentally unfair asset tax. Legally avoiding taxes is ethical and honorable.
The fact that an operating farm, whether in crop production, livestock, or hunting is open land for wildlife and fresh air. CS, like all statists are basically Harkonnens. They want a completely urbanized, industrialized death cult tyranny.
Oh I don’t know. Somewhere in there, there’s a beautiful irony in JC (whose skill as a communicator is unimpeachable, whether you agree with him or not) buying a farm to avoid tax and accidentally becoming farmers’ most effective advocate.