Opinion: Real threat of Labour top team is stance on EU

© Rex Shutterstock

More than a few eyebrows have been raised by the recent appointment of a new shadow Defra secretary. If you haven’t heard about this, get ready, my friends.

The new shadow minister, Kerry McCarthy, is a person who is an anti-meat, non-wool-wearing vegan activist. She has been a vociferous campaigner against the badger cull. She has also said that the meat, dairy and egg industries “cause immense suffering to more than a billion animals every year in the UK alone, most of whom spend their entire lives crammed inside dark, filthy sheds”.

Farmers Weekly provided a useful list of quotes from the new appointee, revealing a person with fixed and certain views on the evils of meat-eating and meat production. As livestock producers we have been judged and found guilty.                 

The farm sector is reported to be “in shock”.

Elizabeth Elder and her husband Jake run sheep and cattle on 235ha of hill ground on the Otterburn Firing Range in Northumberland.

On the face of it, this looks like a giant two-fingered gesture to livestock farmers, particularly at a time of depressed prices, squeezed incomes and financial hardship. One might anticipate that the official Labour line on further complaints from dairy farmers will be that they should just pack up.

It would be easy, indeed logical, to read into this move a signal that the new leader of the Labour party, himself a vegetarian, may not only be unsympathetic to livestock farming, but actually has an agenda to destroy it.

However, to assume this appointment is part of some cunning masterplan may be to overestimate the importance the new leadership attach to farming, especially when they have had difficulty finding anyone willing to join their team. Many experienced Labour MPs appear to have decided to stay well out of it.

Let us consider the context of the shadow cabinet appointments process. Darren McCaffrey of Sky News has described how he and other journalists overheard the drawn-out process of the Labour chief whip ringing up a succession of MPs to try to persuade them to join.

One was reportedly contacted with the words: “Now, this might be a bit of an outside idea, but how do you feel about being shadow defence secretary?”

The conversations concerning the shadow Defra role have not been reported – political journalists don’t seem to care much about Defra either. However, any reaction from: “I visited the countryside once” to “I love badgers” to “British farmers are evil and it is my mission to close them down” are likely to have been greeted with the same response: “Cracking news – welcome to the shadow cabinet.”

So does this matter? After all, Labour is not in power and it is not yet clear how Labour’s policies on farming matters may develop. The next scheduled general election is a long way off and there must be a serious possibility that the current leadership will not be still in place by the time of the next election.

Much more important for farming in the next few years is surely Labour’s attitude towards the forthcoming referendum on EU membership. Until recently, it had been assumed that Labour would campaign to remain a member in all circumstances. However, despite reaffirmed commitments from several senior people, the new team at the top have sent out some mixed signals on this and Mr Corbyn voted “out” last time.

A dilution of Labour’s backing for the EU could provide a massive boost for the campaign to leave, with all sorts of implications for agricultural trade, the subsidy regime and regulations. This is the area to watch.