Editor’s View: Bradshaw’s Defra gambit has paid off – for now

Call up the gossip columnists at Tatler, there’s a new countryside power couple stepping out together: Tom Bradshaw and Emma Reynolds.

Not romantically, you understand, but as a political relationship of convenience.

As we reported last week, the NFU president had laid the groundwork carefully with a lavish gesture, calling off the Stop the Family Farm Tax campaign now that the higher inheritance tax (IHT) allowance has been secured.

See also: Exwood challenges Bradshaw for NFU president

This was a calculated risk on his part, betting that he could keep his membership onside even though many of them still want a full reversal of the hated measures.

Yet he seemingly came through an emergency online meeting of NFU council unscathed in the run-up to the Oxford Farming Conference (OFC) and got his reward from the Defra secretary immediately.

Ms Reynolds naturally welcomed the NFU’s stance to not darken her door on the topic again, and stamped hard on any idea that there could be additional IHT concessions to come.

(Never mind that everyone from the prime minister down was trotted out before those concessions were made to firmly deny that any would ever happen.)

She bigged-up the union’s work (and Mr Bradshaw personally) by talking up how influential their behind-closed-doors type of lobbying had been on finally winning the concessions to inheritance tax changes.

Ms Reynolds also went out of her way to talk down the role of horn-honking protestors that were even then gathered outside the venue.

It benefits both of them that they discourage street protests of course.

Neither were willing to admit that they had a significant impact on the IHT discourse over the past 14 months by keeping the topic prominent in the eyes of lawmakers and the public.

The Defra secretary wants to damp down embarrassment for herself and the prime minister, and the NFU president wants to reduce the chance of getting outflanked by other farming groups.

Mr Bradshaw is also keen, as he told Farmers Weekly Question Time at OFC, to focus the lobbying organisation’s efforts on other topics, including persuading the government to have higher welfare standards on imports if it wants to press ahead with higher domestic production standards.

In taking this stance, the risks to Mr Bradshaw are small, but not zero.

For starters, in the unlikely event that there are further concessions on IHT the NFU can take little to no credit for them.

Mr Bradshaw may also have shifted a few votes against him at the poll of council members next month to confirm his second presidential term.

But it seems highly unlikely that his only rival for the top job, David Exwood, will open up a rift with him on the topic.

And, based on how the government behaves in future, he may come to regret cosying up to them if they make him look small by being anti-farming on other issues.

It’s the job of NFU president to perpetually attempt to straddle the gap between the members and politicians. For now, Mr Bradshaw will feel like the ground beneath both feet is getting firmer.