November 11, 2024 - 2:45pm
Midway through the saga of depression and government folly in Michael Houllebecq’s 2018 novel Serotonin, some much-needed relief comes in the form of a divorced aristocrat leading a farmers’ revolt. On 19 November, British politics is set to experience its own Houellebecqian catharsis: Jeremy Clarkson will reportedly lead farmers into Westminster to protest against Rachel Reeves’s “tractor tax” on farming inheritance.
Battle lines were drawn in Clarkson’s Sun column last week, denouncing as “nonsense” Reeves’s insistence that 72% of farmers would be unaffected by the changes to inheritance tax. “I’m becoming more and more convinced that Starmer and Reeves have a sinister plan,” the TV presenter wrote. “They want to carpet bomb our farmland with new towns for immigrants and net zero wind farms. But before they can do that, they have to ethnically cleanse the countryside of farmers.”
In the aftermath of the US election and in the midst of another Westminster slump, the trademark provocation unleashed a collective yearning. From viral memes to speculation by even the nation’s sensible commentators, a question arose: could Clarkson entering politics be Britain’s “Trump moment”?
The reality might be more boring. Clarkson’s political “gut” seemed to fail its test during the EU referendum, and he appears reluctant to even be the figurehead of the upcoming protests. But such longing tells us less about Clarkson’s political career and more about the existential drift of Britain’s existing upstart populist party.
For the farming protest organisers have already appeared to distance themselves from involvement by Reform UK, as they are keen to avoid point-scoring by politicians. The party is bedding into Westminster in the midst of “modernisation”: a process that has ousted Nigel Farage ally Gawain Towler, promised to empower the membership in decision-making, and thrown a strange shadow over Reform’s July success. After all, the election campaign was a Clarksonian romp of pints, ogling TikToks and set pieces in pub car parks.
Now, the fun is over. An attempt to carry on the momentum beyond the election season flopped with a strange AI-generated advert on broadcast television. This weekend at the party’s conference in Wales, Lee Anderson looked reddened and bored when pushed for details on its plans for NHS reform. More to the point, Farage now arguably has a more important role in British politics: a Washington go-between for what could be a decade-long Trump-led consensus.
The double bind of populism is hard to break: to work within the system you have to act like a political party, but in doing so you risk losing the “anti-politics” appeal that made you popular in the first place. Farage’s successor will inherit not just a party, but a reactionary English archetype that lends itself to rebellion against the dull procedure of Westminster politics. It’s one that awakened during the 2016 referendum and to some extent the 2019 general election thanks to Boris Johnson. And with the onset of an already deeply unpopular Labour government, it may yet awaken again.
In this respect, Clarkson’s newfound role has served to upstage Britain’s would-be political rebels. For a start, it’s impossible to imagine anyone in Reform talking about their two flagship policies like Clarkson has. Ever since the party’s run-in with the media over the vetting of its general election candidates, it has pivoted away from a devil-may-care style of European populism towards what Farage has almost tweely termed “our own island brand”.
Not that Clarkson has any such fear, existing as he does in a universe beyond the inevitable concerns of a Westminster political party in search of a broad electoral coalition. Over the next five years, this won’t be the last time Reform is outmanoeuvred on the flank of outrage, eccentricity and bloody-mindedness.
Indeed, Clarkson’s upcoming revolt will only give the public and the media a reminder of a world now lost: one of crashing planes, naval battles with Bob Geldof and champagne-soaked underdogs in Leave HQ, which always curiously belonged to the Top Gear universe anyway. In its place is something more determined, though blander and less certain. Zia Yusuf is tipped as Reform’s next leader, and has so far channelled an experience seemingly antithetical to the party’s spirit: working with tech start-ups.
At the end of Houellebecq’s revolt, the rebellious country squire commits suicide rather than face arrest. And though Clarkson’s passions are unlikely to lead to such a fate in Westminster, he exists in that same pantheon of the anti-political martyr, heroically doomed in a downward spiral of protest and antagonism. The problem for Reform is that this is a mood that will only grow in Starmer’s Britain, and one the party’s modernisation may leave unsatisfied.
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SubscribeLooking at what’s been happening in Wales, the Welsh Government has consulted virtualy every NGO, ahem “stakeholder”. The one group that hasn’t been invited to group discussion are the farmers.
Yes. I try to avoid saying ‘Welsh Government’ because they are like kids with new toys. ‘Senedd’ is pretentious. Only Welsh Assembly fits. They seem to be playing with a lot of trendy ideas and spending their budget randomly. They are definitely not governing.
They’re not parliaments. They unilaterally chose to call themselves that to bolster their egos. They’re simply “Devolved Assemblies” and, as such, are no more than superanuarated regional councils.
parish council level thinking.
Someone in the Labour system decided that taxing farmers was a great idea without understanding exactly what they were taxing.
I have always lived in the countryside and know/ have known an abundance of farmers from smallholders to the inheritors of noble estates.
The old style big landowners have sorted out their land and ongoing viability years, if not generations ago. These are the aristos who were caught out by inheritance tax between the wars and in the 1950’s. Trusts and limited companies became their friends.
Those who will be impacted by this new IHT will be the fairly small family farms. You don’t need many acres to have an asset value of over a million (sterling). A few hundred acres of decent arable land will push you above this, excluding the house or two, buildings and machinery.
It does sound to me that the Govt. decided to “hit” those investing in land to avoid IHT without looking at who will be those really affected. Madness, but what does one expect from the politics of envy crowd?
This is going to make great TV for Netflix.
You mean Amazon
God bless you Jezza.
JC is too blunt to be a politician. For every admirer he would develop two major enemies. Unfortunately. He uses common sense and does it in an offensive way. Being offensive today gives people ‘mental problems’.
Maybe people with such “mental problems” are wrong type of people?
It seems to have worked for Trump.
Hugh,
have you seen or heard hide nor hair from the Champagne Socialist since The Orange One he so hates romped to victory.
No – can’t say I’m missing the purple-haired numbskull though.
If the two he offends are called Starmer and Reeves, I don’t mind in the least.
Clarkson is to farming what Boris was to politics. A buffoon. A likeable one, but a buffoon nonetheless.
Clarkson is very popular amongst the farming community, so I guess you’re not a farmer, Josef.
The Dutch farmers’ rebellion led ultimately to the comprehensive defeat of the WEF party in the Netherlands. Is it too much to hope the same might happen here?
A relief then that the UK is unlikely to get her own pound-shop demagogue. And neither from the Tory Party, even though it’s just as much of a pound-shop outfit.
I am sorry for you Britain that Farage is a mirage, a fraud apparently and that your Trump is yet to be found.
Farage is desperate to be respectable. Trump doesn’t care. That’s the difference.
Firstly on the Tractor Tax, as happens alot the Yah-Boo twaddle way out ahead of a detailed analysis of a Policy. A married or civil partnership couple would not pay inheritance tax on an asset under £3m, and even then can spread it over a number of years. Not exactly paupers are they. The fundamental issue here is this hits the v rich landowner and they don’t like it. So they try to make out it hits the yeoman farmer. It doesn’t. Clarkson himself admitted when he bought his farm it was to reduce his potential inheritance tax liabilities. (Slight aside but media owners also known to invest in land yet perhaps not make that a declaration of interest)
As regards Clarkson as a political leader in the Farage mode – well apart from having a daughter who criticised him for making vile and misogynistic comments (which in US would of course make him the frontrunner) he’d just be paddling in the same cesspit. And let’s see how he answers a question on the NHS too which recently saved his life? What an example he’s set, until of course it starts to unravel.
Your posts get angrier and more unhinged every day. It’s disappointing. Although always wrong, they used to be at least reasonably well-argued. Now you’re just ranting. Calm down.
Why didn’t you downtick him, then ?
I was the first to do so.