“Since I first voted for Thatcher in 1979, I’ve always gone Conservative,” says the Hertfordshire farmer Andrew Watts – a longer period than the three decades he has been managing his cereal farm near the village of Puckeridge.
But when he enters the voting booth on 4 July, the 64-year-old will be backing the Liberal Democrats. Watts says the switch is partly down to what he calls a “lack of coherent agricultural policy” from Westminster, but he mainly blames it on a loss of integrity within the Tories in recent years.
“I think their policies have ignored rural areas, and ignored the importance of food production,” he says. “The performance since Brexit has shown that this government cannot be trusted.”
Watts’s frustrations tally with those of a growing number of English farmers, whose disillusionment could overturn the Conservatives’ long-assumed status as the party of the countryside.
Whether it is the international trade deals that have removed tariffs on most Australia and New Zealand meat, which many feel undercut domestic livestock farmers, or delays to post-Brexit payment schemes, which have left many struggling financially, its traditional farming electorate in England is feeling unhappy and taken for granted.
“No industry, no part of British society, has been more betrayed or let down by the Conservative government than farming,” says Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for agriculture. “I spend a lot of time with farmers; you see deep anger.”
The polling supports that claim, with a YouGov constituency-by-constituency poll this week suggesting Rishi Sunak’s party could lose rural voters.
In 2019, the 87 constituencies in England with the highest number of National Farmers’ Union (NFU) members elected Conservative MPs. YouGov’s poll predicts that of the 59 of those constituencies that have kept the same name, the Conservatives would hold on to only 32, with Labour winning 16 and the Lib Dems 11 .
A survey of 430 farmers by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit last month recorded Tory support at 32%, down from 41% in 2019, while support for the current opposition hit 35%.
Labour clearly sees an opportunity. Buoyed up by byelection victories over the Tories in rural constituencies such as Mid-Bedfordshire and North Yorkshire’s Selby and Ainsty, the party is now targeting previously out-of-reach rural seats.
Keir Mather, who overturned a 20,000 Conservative majority in Selby last July, says: “I think farmers are giving Labour a fair hearing in a way they haven’t done previously, because they have been so badly let down over the past 14 years.”
He says farmers face “enormous pressures” including workforce shortages, supply-chain disruption and low prices from the food industry and supermarkets. “If you combine that with a government that is taking insufficient action to deal with things like flooding, which devastate farmers across my local community, you can quickly see why farmers are feeling dispossessed.”
Sensing a fracture in the relationship with the party’s rural base, Sunak has responded with a charm offensive. After a disastrous NFU conference in 2023 – when farmers booed the then environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey – this year Sunak became the first prime minister to attend since Gordon Brown in 2008.
He told the audience he “had their backs” and would change the culture in government around agriculture, while announcing the “largest-ever grant scheme” for farmers, with £427m given to technology and productivity schemes. The launch of his Farm to Fork summit at No 10 last month on food production and security was another attempt to show he is listening.
But some think it could be too little, too late. An annual survey for the NFU in April put farmer confidence at its lowest level since records began in 2010. The phasing out of the EU’s basic payment scheme was named the most significant issue shaping the year ahead, with 86% saying the change would have a negative impact. The programme gave a guaranteed payment for food production each year, but now farmers face having their subsidies cut by as much as half.
Its replacement, the sustainable farming incentive (SFI), incentivises farmers to maintain and enhance nature and reduce carbon emissions. While the principles have been welcomed by most parties, its rollout has been beset by delays.
“It’s only really now we have a clear sight of what that support structure looks like,” says Robert Craig, a Cumbrian dairy farmer and chair of the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers. “It’s ridiculous, that’s eight years of uncertainty. Make no mistake a lot of farmers, particularly upland farmers, are hugely reliant on payments.” Uptake for the SFI is steadily increasing, with 17,000 applications in as of April.
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Craig was himself chair and president of the Conservative party in Penrith until 2019 before resigning when local MP Rory Stewart was suspended over his opposition to Boris Johnson’s Brexit agenda. He says he will be voting for the Lib Dems after the government’s approach in recent years has left him “politically homeless”.
Other farmers expressed anger at post-Brexit trade deals with Australia and New Zealand, which remove tariffs on beef and lamb. Many livestock farmers fear being undercut by a flood of cheap imports and say they were not listened to during negotiations. Unhappiness at the deals were one of the motivations behind the tractor protests around the country in February and March, including at Dover and in Westminster.
Wiltshire-based farmer and founder of Save British Farming, Liz Webster, who organised the protest in Parliament Square, called them the “worst trade deals in the world” which would “slaughter” British farmers.
Some disenchanted farmers have sought new political homes. Watts says his switch to the Lib Dems is partially down to policy, but also the people. The Hertforshire farmer believes that the Tories have become too “Westminster-centric” and out of touch with the countryside. “There are a few people that understand agriculture and rural areas but when you have people like Liz Truss who is in a rural constituency but doesn’t understand rural issues, you despair,” he says.
However, George Dunn, chief executive of the Tenant Farmers Association, says most conversations with members about the election are not about switching allegiance, but whether they will vote at all.
Anna Longthorp, who farms pigs near Goole, East Yorkshire, is one such person. Having always voted at a general election, mostly for the Conservatives, the 41-year-old now sees herself as politically homeless.
Longthorp says her decision to turn away from the Conservatives came in 2021 when at least 40,000 pigs were culled due to a lack of abattoir workers.
“It was when the pig crisis hit – that did it for me. When Boris Johnson basically laughed at the situation when being interviewed, and said pigs being culled was no different to them being put into the food chain,” she says.
Voting this July is about “picking the least worst … None of the parties seem to find farming that important,” she says, adding that many of her colleagues in the sector feel the same.
Without efforts to reconnect, such voters could be lost in future elections, not just to the Conservative party but to politics altogether.