Thousands of farmers are expected to join a rally in Whitehall as they protest against the Labour government’s extension of inheritance tax to agricultural property.

The government intends to impose inheritance tax on farmers. Previously, farming businesses qualified for 100 per cent relief on inheritance tax on agricultural property and business property. Changes could undermine investment as farmers will be wary of increasing the balance sheet as they will be liable to pay inheritance tax on it. There are also concerns that it could affect tenant farmers if landowners no longer benefit from having a tax exemption for farmed land. While farms may have a high nominal asset value – the value of their land and business assets – the returns from farming are often very low, so farming families may not have the reserves to pay for inheritance tax liabilities without selling off assets.

If anything explains why Keir Starmer met with Bill Gates recently, this terrifying change to farming land rights is it. Farmers will be unable to hand on their farms to the sons and daughters. The traditional family-owned farm will disappear. Industrial farming on a colossal scale will thus be ushered in. All livestock will be artificially altered to increase yield and comply with ridiculous Gatesian obsessions – seriously endangering the well-being of consumers. Hedgerows, coppices and coverts, meandering streams, all the distinctive characteristics of British farmland will disappear. The rotation of the crops will abandoned, and within fifty years, Britain will be a wasteland.