How climate change and red tape could be jeopardising UK access to affordable food
It might be tempting, given how much coverage has focused on it recently, to assume the forthcoming changes to inheritance tax regime are the single biggest issue facing farmers these days.
But the reality is these tax changes come at a moment of extraordinary pressure, with farmers having to contend with a swathe of unsettling issues, many of which could prove existential for their livelihoods.
Put them all together and you realise that for many of those marching in the streets in London, inheritance tax isn’t the only problem – it’s more like the last straw.
Why does this matter for the rest of us? In part because there’s a deeper story here.
For decades, this country’s level of food security has been more or less constant. This country has produced roughly 60 per cent of our own food for two decades (the figure was even higher in the 1980s). But farmers warn that given all the pressures they’re facing, that critical buffer could be about to be removed, with domestic production falling and dependence on imported food rising.
Whether that eventuates remains to be seen. As of 2023 the amount of food supplied domestically was still 62 per cent of everything we consumed. But now let’s consider the challenges facing farmers (even before we get to inheritance tax).
The first of them comes back to Brexit.
Following Britain’s departure from the EU, the government is making dramatic and far reaching changes to the way it supports farmers. For years, those payments, part of the EU-wide Common Agricultural Policy, were based on the amount of land farmed by each recipient.
Alongside these main farm payments there were other bolt-on schemes – Environmental Land Management schemes, to give them their category name – designed to encourage farmers to do more to look after local wildlife. But these schemes were always small in comparison to the main land-based farm payments.
There were problems aplenty with this old scheme. For one thing, all told, it amounted to a subsidy for land ownership rather than food production. Nonetheless, for many farmers it was an essential support, without which they would have had to sell up and stop producing food.
Under Michael Gove, Defra committed to far-reaching changes to these subsidies. Farms across the UK would get the same total amounts, he said, but instead of the majority being based on how much land they were farming, a growing portion would be environmental subsidies.
When Labour came into government it committed to accelerating this process, with the result that by 2027, fully 100 per cent of farm payments will be for environmental schemes.
Whether this is the right or wrong move is a matter of keen debate within the farming community. Many farmers argue that the net impact of environmental schemes is to reduce the amount of land being farmed for food, and that the schemes serve to reduce their crop yields rather than increasing them. Defra, and environmental advocates, argue that unless the soil and local habitats are preserved and improved, Britain faces ever diminishing harvests in future.
Speaking of harvests, that brings us to another issue farmers are having to contend with at the moment – poor crop yields. The past winter was exceptionally wet, with the upshot that the latest figures just released by Defra show 2024 was the second lowest wheat harvest since comparable records began in the early 1980s.
Now, the whole point of farming is that it’s weather dependent – no two years are alike. It’s quite conceivable that 2025’s harvest bounces back from this year’s. But one projection made by climate scientists is that the coming decades could be wetter and more volatile, spelling more trouble for farmers.
On top of this is another challenge: trade competition. Following Brexit, the UK has signed two trade deals with Australia and New Zealand, which raise the quotas of how much food each country can export to the UK. Look at trade data and you see a sharp increase in beef and dairy imports from Australia and New Zealand.
In other words, UK farmers are having to contend with more competition even as they contend with worse weather and drastic changes to their funding model.
Nor is this where the challenges end. Because we might also be in the midst of something else: a secular slowdown in farming productivity.
Look at a very, very long-range historic chart of crop yields in the UK. You see a few interesting features. For most of our history, from the Middle Ages through to today, the amount of wheat we could grow in a given hectare of land was pretty low and pretty constant.
Now look at what happened in the second half of the 20th century. Thanks to a combination of artificial fertilisers, combine harvesters and other technological leaps, yields leapt by 200 per cent.
This extraordinary leap is the story of British farming for the parents and grandparents of those family farms tending the land today: ever increasing yields even as the government provided large subsidies for farmers. It was, in terms of pure yields, the golden age for farms – fuelled in part by chemicals.
But now look at the far right hand side of the chart – the past 20 years or so. The line is no longer rising so fast. Farm productivity – at least based on this measure – has slowed quite markedly. Yields are no longer leaping in the way they once were.
Or, to put it another way, it’s getting tougher to generate a return for each hour of work and each pound of investment.
Farmers have staged protests at government plans
This might all seem miles away from the day-to-day debates on farming today. But each of these factors matters. Together, they help explain why things are getting tougher for farmers.
But there’s a broader issue at hand here. Despite having left the EU and implemented far reaching policies such as these, this country hasn’t really had a proper debate about food.
Do we prefer to subsidise farmers in an effort to maintain our domestic food supplies at 60 per cent of our consumption? Would we rather ditch those subsidies and rely on imports instead? Should we favour the long-term health of the environment over short term food production?
These are chewy questions – and ones we really ought to be debating a little more. This isn’t just about inheritance tax…
“Return hubs” that would see Britain send failed asylum seekers to another country have been endorsed by the UN’s refugee agency.
There have been reports that Sir Keir Starmer’s government is looking into deporting illegal migrants to the Balkans.
According to The Times, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper met the UN’s high commissioner for refugees last month to discuss the idea.
It would see the government pay countries in the Balkans to take failed asylum seekers – a prospect ministers hope might discourage people from crossing the Channel in small boats.
A total of 9,099 migrants have made that journey so far this year, including more than 700 on Tuesday this week – the highest number on a single day in 2025.
One migrant died while trying to make the crossing on Friday.
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One dead in Channel crossing
The UN’s refugee agency has set out how such hubs could work while meeting its legal standards in a document published earlier this week.
It recommended monitoring the hubs to make sure human rights standards are “reliably met”.
The country hosting the return hub would need to grant temporary legal status for migrants, and the country sending the failed asylum seekers would need to support it to make sure there are “adequate accommodation and reception arrangements”.
A UK government source said it was a helpful intervention that could make the legal pathway to some form of return hub model smoother.
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It comes after the EU Commission proposed allowing EU members to set up so-called “return hubs” abroad, with member state Italy having already started sending illegal migrants abroad.
It sends people with no right to remain to Italian-run detention centres in Albania, something Sir Keir has taken an interest in since coming to power.
With Reform UK leading Labour in several opinion polls this year, the prime minister has been talking tough on immigration – but the figures around Channel crossings have made for difficult reading.
Lib Dems don’t tend to listen to right-wing podcasts.
But if they did, they may be heartened by some of what they hear.
Take the interview Kemi Badenoch gave to the TRIGGERnometry show in February.
Ten minutes into the episode, one of the hosts recounts a conversation with a Tory MP who said the party lost the last election to the Lib Dems because they went too far to the right.
Everyone laughs.
Then in March, in a conversation with the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, the Tory leader was asked to describe a Liberal Democrat.
“Somebody who is good at fixing their church roof,” said Ms Badenoch.
She meant it as a negative.
Lib Dems now mention it every time you go near any of them with a TV camera.
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‘It’s a two-horse race!’
The pitch is clear, the stunts are naff
At times, party figures seem somewhat astonished the Tories don’t view them as more of a threat, given they were beaten by them in swathes of their traditional heartlands last year.
Going forward, the pitch is clear.
Sir Ed Davey wants to replace the Tories as the party of middle England.
Sir Ed rides on a rollercoaster. Pic: PA
One way he’s trying to do that is through somewhat naff and very much twee campaign stunts.
To open this local election race, the Lib Dem leader straddled a hobbyhorse and galloped through a blue fence.
More recently, he’s brandished a sausage, hopped aboard a rollercoaster and planted wildflowers.
Senior Lib Dems say they are “constantly asking” whether this is the correct strategy, especially given the hardship being faced by many in the country.
They maintain it is helping get their message out though, according to the evidence they have.
“I think you can take the issues that matter to voters seriously while not taking yourself too seriously, and I also think it’s a way of engaging people who are turned off by politics,” said Sir Ed.
Sir Ed on a hobby horse during the launch of the party’s local election campaign in the Walled Garden of Badgemore Park in Henley-on-Thames. Pic: PA
Pic: PA
‘What if people don’t want grown-ups?’
In that way, the Lib Dems are fishing in a similar pool of voters to Reform UK, albeit from the other side of the water’s edge.
Indeed, talk to Lib Dem MPs, and they say while some Reform supporters they meet would never vote for a party with the word “liberal” in its name, others are motivated more by generalised anger than any traditional political ideology.
These people, the MPs say, can be persuaded.
But this group also shows a broader risk to the Lib Dem approach.
Put simply, are they simply too nice for the fractured times we live in?
“The Lib Dems want to be the grown-ups in the room,” says Joe Twyman, director of Delta Poll.
“We like to think that the grown-ups in the room will be rewarded… but what if people don’t want grown-ups in the room, what if people want kids shitting on the floor.”
Sir Ed canoeing in the River Severn in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. Pic: PA
A plan that looks different to the status quo
The party’s answer to this is that they are alive to the trap Lib Dems have walked into in the past of adopting a technocratic tone and blandly telling the public every issue is a “bit more complicated” than it seems.
One senior figure says the Lib Dems are trying to do something quite unusual for a progressive centre-left party in making a broader emotional argument about why the public should pick them.
This source says that approach runs through the stunts but also through the focus on care and the party leader’s personal connection to the issue.
Presenting a plan that looks different to the status quo is another way to try to stand apart.
It’s why there has been a focus on attacking Donald Trump and talking up the EU recently, two areas left unoccupied by the main parties.
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‘A snivelling cretin’: Your response?
The focus on local campaigning
But beyond the national strategy, Lib Dems believe it’s their local campaigning that really reaps rewards.
In the run-up to the last election, several more regional press officers were recruited.
Many stories pumped out by the media office now have a focus on data that can be broken down to a constituency level and given to local news outlets.
Party sources say there has also been a concerted attempt to get away from the cliche of the Lib Dems constantly calling for parliament to be recalled.
“They beat us to it,” said one staffer of the recent recall to debate British Steel.
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Steel might have been ‘under orders’ from China
‘Gail’s bakery rule’
This focus on the local is helped by the fact many Lib Dem constituencies now look somewhat similar.
That was evidenced by the apparent “Gail’s bakery rule” last year, in which any constituency with a branch of the upmarket pastry purveyor had activists heaped on it.
The similarities have helped the Lib Dems get away from another cliche – that of the somewhat opportunist targeting of different areas with very different messages.
“There is a certain consistency in where we won that helps explain that higher vote retention,” said Lib Dem president Lord Pack.
“Look at leaflets in different constituencies [last year] and they were much more consistent than previous elections… the messages are fundamentally the same in a way that was not always the case in the past.”
Sir Ed in a swan pedalo on Bude Canal in Cornwall. Pic: PA
A bottom-up campaign machine
New MPs have also been tasked with demonstrating delivery and focusing doggedly on the issues that matter to their constituents.
One Home Counties MP says he wants to be able to send out leaflets by 2027, saying “everyone in this constituency knows someone who has been helped by their local Lib Dem”.
In the run-up to last year’s vote, strategists gave the example of the Lib Dem candidate who was invited to a local ribbon-cutting ceremony in place of the sitting Tory MP as proof of how the party can ingratiate itself into communities.
With that in mind, the aim for these local elections is to pick up councillors in the places the party now has new MPs, allowing them to dig in further and keep building a bottom-up campaign machine.
‘Anyone but Labour or Conservative’
But what of the next general election?
Senior Lib Dems are confident of holding their current 72 seats.
They also point to the fact 20 of their 27 second-place finishes currently have a Conservative MP.
Those will be the main focus, along with the 43 seats in which they finished third.
There’s also an acronym brewing to describe the approach – ABLOC or “Anyone but Labour or Conservative”.
Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch aren’t exactly flying high in the opinion polls
9% swing could make Sir Ed leader of the opposition
The hope is for the political forces to align and Reform UK to continue splitting the Tory vote while unpopularity with the Labour government and Conservative opposition triggers some to jump ship.
A recent pamphlet by Lord Pack showed if the Tories did not make progress against the other parties, just 25 gains from them by the Lib Dems – the equivalent of a 9% swing – would be enough to make Sir Ed leader of the opposition.
What’s more, a majority of these seats would be in the South East and South West, where the party has already picked up big wins.
As for the overall aim of all this, Lord Pack is candid the Lib Dems shouldn’t view a hung parliament as the best way to achieve the big prize of electoral reform because they almost always end badly for the smaller party.
Instead, the Lib Dem president suggests the potential fragmentation of politics could bring electoral reform closer in a more natural way.
“What percentage share of the vote is the most popular party going to get at the next general election, it’s quite plausible that that will be under 30%. Our political system can’t cope with that sort of world,” he said.
Whether Ms Badenoch will still be laughing then remains to be seen.
This is part of a series of local election previews with the five major parties. All five have been invited to take part.
Politics
PM and Trump step up trade talks – as chancellor warns it’s ‘foolish’ not to engage with China
It would be “foolish” to stop engaging with China, the chancellor has said, as Sir Keir Starmer held his first call with Donald Trump since he put 10% tariffs on goods imported from the UK.
Rachel Reeves will hold talks with the US next week amid efforts to establish a trade deal, which the government hopes will take the sting out of the president’s tariffs.
There has been speculation Washington may press the government to limit its dealings with China as part of that deal, having launched a tit-for-tat trade war with its economic rival.
But Ms Reeves told The Daily Telegraph:”China is the second-biggest economy in the world, and it would be, I think, very foolish, to not engage.
“That’s the approach of this government.”
She suggested she would back the fast fashion firm Shein launching an initial public offering (IPO) in the UK, saying the London Stock Exchange and Financial Conduct Authority have “very strict standards” and “we do want to welcome new listings”.
Shein, which was founded in China but is now based in Singapore, has faced several obstacles to its efforts to float, including UK political pressure over alleged supply chain and labour abuses.
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Sir Keir Starmer and Donald Trump met in February. Pic: PA
‘Productive discussions’
When it comes to a UK-US deal, The Daily Telegraph has reported officials in Washington believe an agreement could be weeks away.
But on Thursday, Mr Trump said he was in “no rush” to reach any deals because of the revenues his new tariffs are generating.
During Sir Keir’s call with the US president on Friday, the two leaders talked about the “ongoing and productive discussions” on trade between the two nations, according to a Downing Street spokesperson.
“The prime minister reiterated his commitment to free and open trade and the importance of protecting the national interest,” Number 10 said.
As well as the 10% levy on all goods imported to America from the UK, Mr Trump enacted a 25% levy on car imports.
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