Small farmer comments go too far

John McTernan, my old colleague, has caused a real stushie calling for goodness knows what to happen to farmers for having the temerity to protest about Labour’s budget.

An excellent columnist and leader writer for Scotland on Sunday, John has been one of the most incisive centre-left thinkers in Scotland for many years, or certainly was until this week when he told GB News that small farmers were “an industry we could do without”.

Oh dear. “I am personally in favour if farmers want to go on the streets, we can do what Margaret Thatcher did to the miners,” he said.

Set aside the fact that more mines were closed under Harold Wilson’s 1964-70 Labour government (235) than Mrs Thatcher’s 11 years in power (115), small farmers include Scottish crofters, guardians of Scotland’s rural heritage and traditional way of life.

It might be easy to think of farmers as all Jeremy Clarksons (although he’s proving remarkably popular) but small farmers are just people trying to do their best for their families in the only way they know, and who have the natural instinct to want to pass something onto their children.

John likes a bit of a wind-up, and he certainly succeeded this week, but in so doing has only reinforced the view that, as with VAT on private schools, Labour is still driven by envy.

That won’t bother him, but when your views are disowned by a Prime Minister for whom you’ve waited 14 years, maybe you’ve gone too far.