RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Labour puts the boot into farmers (…with £420 designer wellies from Lord Alli)

Every picture tells a story, according to Rod Stewart. So what are we to make of these two snapshots of our new Socialist overlords?

Exhibit One: The Right Honourable Steve Reed, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, posing in a pair of £420 leather-lined Le Chameau ‘Chasseur’ boots alongside Minette Batters, former president of the National Farmers’ Union.

Exhibit Two: Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves at a farm in Swerford, Oxfordshire, with Keir Starmer on the General Election campaign trail in July. She’s wearing a pair of pristine white plimsolls. Both photocalls were arranged to demonstrate Labour’s commitment to the rural economy.

That, of course, was before Reeves sounded the death knell for farming families in her scorched-earth Budget, scrapping the exemptions which until now have allowed farms to be passed down the generations free of inheritance tax.

As the headline on a commentary by Reed’s former new best friend Batters in The Mail on Sunday put it: ‘This Treasury attack on farmers is unforgivable. It will destroy lives, force up food prices . . . and ruin the countryside.’