As a farmer, there's one thing that annoys us more than anything else about Starmer - James Wright

Calving is due to start any day, the weather is brightening, and I should be getting ready for our busiest season, but I yet again find myself needing to correct Sir Kier Starmer’s dodgy record on food security again.

What though do you expect from a vegetarian?

Last week, Labour unveiled a new pledge to advise schools and hospitals to buy more British food. It’s an attempt to win back the trust of farmers.

It was sold as a gesture, a way to ensure homegrown food finds a guaranteed market. In fact, when you read the announcement it’s like all Starmer promises, it’s not worth the paper it’s written on.

Labour wants a new deal for farmers but there is no deal at all. It’s an empty headline that does nothing to address the fundamental issues facing farmers.

Starmer is simply hoping to throw a bone to the farming community while quietly pressing ahead with policies that will destroy farming, our countryside and rural communities as we know it.

The idea of using public institutions to buy British food isn’t new. The Conservatives have already been pushing for it, and yet, as any farmer will tell you, the real obstacles aren’t solved by an arbitrary target set in Westminster.

The reason British food isn’t more prevalent in schools and hospitals isn’t because suppliers don’t want to buy British, it’s because they can buy it cheaper from abroad.

If they were serious about a new deal, they’d address these challenges, not just issuing a decree that makes good PR.

British farmers face some of the most stringent environmental and welfare regulations in the world. While high standards are a good thing, Labour continues to pile on more restrictions without offering any practical support or incentives.

A party that wants to raise the minimum wage significantly without sector-specific considerations, increase the cost of employment with hikes in National Insurance contributions and keep energy prices artificially high through net zero policies is hardly a friend of British farming or the consumer.

Steve Reed said this week no trade deals would undercut British stands but days later Kier Starmer was in the Whitehouse asking for a US trade deal which will inevitably lead to lowering of those standards.

If it’s illegal to produce here, it should be illegal to import here. Plain and simple, it’s the hypocrisy farmers cannot stand.

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This proposal is even more insulting when you consider Labour’s broader agenda.

At the same time as promising to buy more British food, they are, introducing the Family Farm Tax by scrapping the Agricultural Property Relief on Inheritance Tax, which will devastate family farms by forcing the next generation to sell off land to pay the tax bill.

Pushing an aggressive rewilding agenda through their land use framework that prioritises 18% of our farmland for tree planting and land abandonment over food production.

Farmers have seen enough to know when they’re being sold down the river. This is a sector that has been battered by ideological policymaking, rising costs, and government indifference.

On Tuesday Steve Reed spoke at the Nation Farmers Union conference where he was asked questions by tearful farmers about whether their parents should kill themselves before the family farm tax deadline next April, to avoid having to sell the farm.

The following day he went to a Westminster press junket and joked that he was minister for ‘Sewage and angry farmers’.

When the nation’s food security is at stake. When our farmers are on their knees. The last thing they need are empty promises and cheap jokes.

The only thing Labour has for the countryside is contempt.

Farmers aren’t buying it, and neither should the public.