Editor’s View: Reed’s speech fails to match the moment

Defra secretary Steve Reed clearly spent Christmas pondering a new defence to farming’s outcry over Labour’s changes to inheritance tax.

Perhaps it was after a festive game of Buckaroo when inspiration struck.

See also: Budget highlights need for inheritance document housekeeping

Again and again farmers have told him that this change to inheritance tax (IHT) is the final straw that broke the camel’s back, he claimed at the Oxford Farming Conference.

Therefore, he can only accept responsibility for a teaspoon of the anger that has sent farmers onto the street in protest as all those previous straws certainly aren’t his fault.

Naturally, the responsibility for the sheaves of other problems that have weighed down UK agriculture lies with the previous Conservative administration.

Charming. Perhaps an appreciation that some farming businesses were one step from failure should have given the Treasury pause for thought about levying an additional burden on our sector.

Perhaps he didn’t appreciate that when the tax was being designed; or he did appreciate it but wasn’t able to lobby effectively on our behalf; or maybe he did appreciate it but didn’t care or wasn’t involved but is now content to defend it out of loyalty.

None of these outcomes leave him smelling of roses.

Nor is there any plan to row back on the IHT changes, not even for those older farmers who may not have time to escape the impact.

“The tax policy was announced in the Budget and it stands,” he said, only adding that he was “sorry we had to take very difficult decisions for the sector because of the situation we inherited”.

Whatever was on his festive table, I don’t think it was humble pie.

Certainly no acknowledgement of the legion of experts who have warned that the scope and impact of this tax will be much broader than the Treasury initially said.

Instead, his attempted positive message to the OFC delegates was that he wanted to improve farming’s overall profitability in order to make the sector more resilient – and presumably so that the impact of higher taxes could be mitigated.

That is exactly the sort of message that may have landed well in other times, especially when the overall theme of the conference is facing change and finding opportunity.

Had IHT not been dominating the agenda – and the din of tractor horns from outside not filled the auditorium – he may have got away with his modest reform proposals.

After all, before the election farmers were desperately hoping that environmental policies would not be upended yet again – steady implementation and some semblance of future certainty was preferable to most.

Yet overall it was an inadequate performance that failed to match the moment.

As the noise from outside intensified his face slowly started to match the colour of his burgundy tie.

Later, his car had to be escorted off the premises by a couple of dozen police officers to keep the peace and avoid it being boxed in by tractors and placard wavers.

I don’t think they are going to be placated by the promise of a light smear of jam tomorrow.