English farmers rethink Tory allegiance over ‘botched’ Brexit

On the fell above Richard Pedley’s farmhouse on the Cumbria-Lancashire border, the number of grazing sheep has plummeted from about 2,500 in the 1990s when he left school, to just 350 today. 

An upland sheep and beef farmer, Pedley believes the government has hastened the decline of livestock numbers in rural counties such as Northumberland, Derbyshire, Shropshire and Cumbria by failing to replace the subsidies they received when the UK was still part of the EU.

“I feel like we’ve been ignored by ministers,” Pedley said. The payments he receives today are a third of what they were before the EU scheme started to be phased out in 2021, he added.

Part of the problem is that his farm is not eligible for much of the support offered through the UK’s new Environmental Land Management scheme, set up to replace lost EU funds.

A traditionally Conservative-voting group, farmers around England are thinking twice before they cast their vote at the general election next week, as polls predict steep losses in some rural Tory strongholds.

The UK farming sector has long faced tough economic challenges. Small- and mid-sized farms tend to make low margins and most receive government subsidies in return for delivering affordable food for the country.

But the situation for farmers like Pedley has deteriorated further since Brexit and the subsequent transition to new agricultural and trade policies. These challenges have been exacerbated by impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, price pressures and climate change. 

Some 8,000 farming businesses have closed since 2019, constituting a drop of more than 5 per cent to 141,000, according to official statistics. And farmers’ dissatisfaction with their economic situation appears to have hit the Conservatives hard.

In the 2019 general election, 46 per cent of voters in rural communities, of which farmers are a key constituent, voted Conservative, according to a Survation poll for the Country Land and Business Association (CLA).

But results of a more recent CLA poll showed the predicted Tory vote share had fallen by a quarter to 34 per cent in February. Meanwhile, Labour had climbed to 37 per cent, up 17 points from the last election. 

“There’s a real sense that farmers have been thrown under the bus,” said former Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, who has long championed upland farmers. He is currently defending his Cumbrian seat of Westmorland and Lonsdale in north-western England, a Lib Dem stronghold.

In Cumbria, Labour is seizing the chance to win back areas it lost in the 2017 and 2019 elections around the towns of Whitehaven and Workington.

“Because they’ve traditionally supported Conservatives, they [farmers] feel betrayed,” he said, adding that this was because of the “botched” transition to the new subsidy scheme and post-Brexit trade deals, which farmers fear will undercut British produce.

Farmers are furious about trade deals with Australia and New Zealand, which will boost the number of goods the countries can export to the UK, fearing this will allow overseas livestock producers to undercut them on price.

“We are a country with high animal welfare and environmental standards, and we are going to disadvantage ourselves with lower standards. That is morally wrong and an economic hit,” said Farron. 

“As a traditional Conservative voter, I really do not quite know which way to turn,” said Jo Hilditch, a farmer in North Herefordshire. “This government is doing little, but I can’t see that the other parties will do anything more.”

In England, the payment scheme available to farmers under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy is being phased out, ending completely in 2027.

It will be replaced by three payment schemes intended to provide incentives for farmers to adopt environment-friendly practices such as soil management and tree planting. 

But the rollout has been fraught with delays and IT issues, with farmers like Pedley, who relied on the EU payments to make their business viable, having the rug pulled out from under them before the new scheme was in place. 

Steve Reed, Labour’s shadow secretary of state for the environment, said his party was committed to delivering the ELM schemes but that the system needed to be simplified. 

“Labour will cut through the Tory bureaucracy that has blocked farmers from receiving funding for work that will strengthen our domestic food security, and protect nature and wildlife habitats on their land,” he said. The party has not specified how it will streamline the scheme. 

NFU President Tom Bradshaw said it was “deeply disappointing” that there was no mention of an agriculture budget — the “single most vital element” — in the Labour manifesto.

“This isn’t just ‘money for farmers’,” he said. “It’s the funding which helps the sector transition away from the old EU system.”

Despite their grievances, not all farmers are convinced Labour has the solution, with some concerned that under Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership, environmental policy will take an even greater precedence and that food production will suffer.

Jim Campbell, an upland tenant farmer in the north of Cumbria, said the farming vote was likely to be split between the Lib Dems and Reform.

“I don’t think many of them will be voting Labour,” he said, pointing to protests against policies in Wales, which is led by a Labour administration, which require farmers to commit 20 per cent of their land to tree planting and rewilding.

Pedley said that in spite of his frustrations, he was still deciding whether to vote Conservative, to prevent a landslide Labour victory, or Lib Dem, his preferred party, and “live in hope”.