TV personality and Oxfordshire farm owner Jeremy Clarkson has joined thousands of farmers protesting against the October Budget’s new agricultural inheritance tax policy.

Today (19 November) farmers staged a rally in Westminster London, accompanied by well-known figures, such as Clarkson, and MPs including Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch, and former home secretary Priti Patel.

In a plea to the government, Clarkson backed calls for the government to “please back down” and revise some of the planned changes in the Budget, such as the reversal of inheritance tax relief for agricultural property over £1m.

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National Union of farmer president Tom Bradshaw called the new measures a “tax on family farms” and described it as a “stab in the back”.

He said: “You know what this means for our families, our children and our far. It is wrong. It is wrong on every level.”

“Just as bad as that it won’t achieve what the Treasury set out to achieve. This is a policy that will rip the heart out of the British family farm.”

Despite this, prime minister Sir Keir Starmer told Sky News that he is certain the “vast majority [of farmers] will be unaffected”, and maintained the policy is designed to “support farming”.

The rally comes amid further calls by some campaigners for more drastic strike activity such as blockade of ports, airports and railway lines, leading the government to draw up food shortage contingency plans.

The farming sector is not the only industry to have criticised the October Budget, as UK retailers today warned Chancellor Rachel Reeves that her decision to raise employers’ National Insurance contributions in the Budget will lead to “inevitable” job cuts and price rises.