It was free-to-enter for the seven-race card at Fakenham on Sunday – but only if you arrived in a tractor, and parked in the middle of the track where the ITV Racing cameras – which were making a rare excursion to the Norfolk course – could see you. Around 50 turned up as part of a protest that David Hunter, Fakenham’s veteran chief executive, said earlier this month would “illustrate the sense of frustration the rural community and businesses have about this devastating farm inheritance tax that Keir Starmer’s government is determined to implement”.
Hunter’s initial hope that the infield would be “filled with line upon line of tractors” was not entirely fulfilled, but it still made for an arresting sight as the leaders galloped down the short home straight. So much so, in fact, that George Freeman MP, the Tory member for nearby mid-Norfolk, was moved to talk about a “rural revolt … [which] will be driven by farming and the rural service economy, but also by racing”. If racing “gets together with farming and the broader rural economy,” he added, “we could win this.”
