When Keir Starmer takes to the stage at the National Farmers’ Union conference next week, he may find his audience more receptive than expected.
The rural vote is swinging away from the Conservatives, and seats in communities that have been true blue for years could be going to Labour or the Liberal Democrats at the next election if recent opinion polls are borne out by reality.
Thérèse Coffey, the environment secretary, faced tough questions and a chilly reception late last year at her first public outing. She had chosen to address countryside landowners, the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), which previously would have been one of the safest audiences. But a botched agricultural strategy that has left land managers out of pocket and trade deals that undercut UK farmers have led to widespread anger in the sector. Not to mention the scourge of second homes, cuts to public services in remote areas, and lack of connection to broadband and the National Grid. Thirteen years of Tory rule have failed to bring many rural areas into the 21st century.
These unresolved issues mean the CLA’s polling suggest a move towards Labour. Conducted in March, well before Boris Johnson’s resignation and Liz Truss’s budget fiasco, the results showed 36% of members intended to vote Labour, while 38% backed the Conservatives. For the 2019 general election, 46% of CLA members said they voted Tory compared with 29% who said Labour. When this year’s survey results come out, it would be surprising if Labour was not ahead.
Jonathan Roberts, the association’s director of external affairs, believes the rural vote is up for grabs: “Any party that comes up with a robust and ambitious plan for the rural economy will win votes. That means substantial planning reform, a sensible approach to housing that allows a small number of homes to be built in a large number of villages, and investment in infrastructure and connectivity.”
Roberts says his members feel let down by years of Tory rule: “Conservatives can often talk authoritatively on complex and nuanced rural issues – but after 13 years it’s difficult to see what ambition they have for the countryside, with MPs seemingly worried by nimbys or other groups determined to treat the countryside as a museum.
“Left-leaning parties might smell blood, but they won’t pick up rural votes by default. They still need to earn people’s trust. It’s no use having your photo taken with a tractor if you’re just going to get back on the train to London and forget about us. Rural voters will see through that all day long.”
Mark Spencer, the agricultural minister, probably thought he was on home turf at the Oxford farming conference in January. From a farming background himself, and often sporting ties featuring pigs and cows, announcing a £1,000 annual payment for farmers who sign up to the new post-Brexit nature schemes should have gone down well. Instead, farmers were outraged at the “too little too late” sum and lack of clarity from Spencer, who refused to take live questions.
According to Minette Batters, the president of the NFU, the vote is wide open at the moment. “No one has clear policies on any of this,” she says. “The vast majority of our country is rural. And we’ve got to turbocharge that rural economy. Levelling up has been – rightly in some cases – focused on cities. But rural areas are left behind and could be doing more clean, green business if they could just connect to the internet, the grid, had a bus service. We need bold plans to create a new economic model for the countryside.”
The pitch is open for a politician who is willing to take on these thorny issues – and listen to rural communities. Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ environment spokesperson, thinks he is the man to do just that.
“My sense is the Conservatives do take farmers’ votes for granted,” he says. “I was at a farming conference last year and was asked by the audience: ‘How do we stop them taking us for granted?’ I quite cheekily said ‘stop voting for them’ and was met with laughter and applause. Eighty per cent of the people in the room had voted Conservative at the last election.”
Farron believes rural communities feel let down as GP surgeries shut, bus services close and second-homeowners push people out of communities.
“The facts are that it simply costs more to run public services in areas that are sparsely populated,” he says. “If you want people in rural areas to have healthcare at all, then we need to be prepared to accept that it costs a bit more per head just because you’ll be taking fewer people over a much larger area. We have been standing up for that.”
He says Lib Dem policies include changes to planning rules to disincentivise second-home ownership, and maintaining and improving public services in rural areas. “You’ve got a government that doesn’t seem to be that bothered about these policies. It doesn’t think that it needs to worry about those places because they will vote Conservative anyway,” Farron adds.
Labour also sees rural issues as social justice issues. Jim McMahon, the shadow environment secretary, says: “When I speak to people they say: ‘I want to know that the areas where I’ve been born and raised will be the area where my children, their children can stay, they won’t be forced out because there isn’t the jobs, there isn’t the housing the transport is so bad. They can’t get a hospital appointment.’ That is what a Labour government will fix.”
The Tory George Eustice, a former environment secretary, is standing down as MP for Camborne and Redruth at the next election, with Labour likely to win the large, rural constituency in Cornwall.
He says the Tories’ reputation as the party of the countryside has been dented by the trade deals negotiated by Truss as trade secretary. Those deals have been described as undercutting British farmers by allowing lower standards in imported food.
“There’s no doubt that the Australia trade deal in particular sends the wrong signal to agriculture, and that’s not been helpful,” Eustice says. “I share some of the NFU’s concerns. Agriculture is an important industry. And it’s also bound up in issues around food safety, and animal welfare issues, all of which are important. The trade deals that Liz Truss did are not the trade deals I would have liked done.”
But he thinks a swing towards Labour could put farmers and landowners out of pocket, as the party has not as of yet committed to maintaining the £2.4bn annual budget for farming payments.
“A Labour government would be a more urban government, and the Treasury would reassert itself,” Eustice says. “You would have junior, more inexperienced ministers in Defra [Department for the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs] and there’s a real danger for farming there because I think there’s a risk that the budget that’s currently going on the sustainable farming incentive would be removed. And replaced with regulation.”
