by Liam Stokes

This was the question that closed the Countryside Alliance fringe at Labour conference, a panel discussion entitled “How can Labour make Brexit work for the countryside?” based on our Brexit policy document. The question was asked by a frustrated party member from South West Norfolk CLP, a constituency currently represented by Liz Truss.

I happen to believe the answer to the question lies partially within the title of the fringe, which is precisely what I argued during my opening remarks as the first panellist to speak. At this point I think most people accept that the main barrier to Labour progress in rural areas is cultural, the perception and indeed the reality that until recently Labour has treated the countryside with a “polite disinterest”, to repeat the oft-quoted line from Maria Eagle’s report Labour’s Rural Problem.

I argued that Labour can help shed this image by showing some real passion for making Brexit work for the countryside. Everyone is talking about Brexit in great sweeping macro terms, yes or no to the Single Market, yes or no to Freedom of Movement, which is entirely understandable at this stage of the debate. But what the countryside needs to hear, and what I was hoping to hear at our own fringe and at the other rural fringes I attended, was an interest in the details that will matter to rural communities.

This doesn’t necessarily mean farming, but it does mostly mean farming. It’s true that most rural voters aren’t directly involved in agriculture, which only employs around half a million people, but again: Labour’s rural disconnect is cultural. Farming, and other land based industries like fishing and shooting, go right to the heart of rural culture. Land based industries shape the landscapes we look at, influence many of the social events going on in our towns and villages, and drive much of the conversation down the local pub. And I speak from painful experience when I say it is a little disheartening to wear the red rosette when the farmland bordering every road and railway line is festooned with “Vote Conservative” signs.

So putting effort into working for the land based industries could be electorally useful in the countryside, and as my fellow panellists Will Straw and Helen Goodman MP pointed out, it is also of immediate importance. Agriculture should be top of Labour’s policy agenda because farming is so uniquely exposed to Brexit.

In order to find out what Labour is thinking about these things I attended a few other rural fringes and heard quite a lot from the Shadow Defra team, including Shadow Secretary Sue Hayman. What I heard was an awful lot of pledges to listen. In more usual times, listening might be appropriate for this stage of the electoral cycle, but it was pointed out during the National Farmers’ Union’s exquisitely-catered fringe that there could be an election at any time which could thrust Sue Hayman into the Defra hot seat. I would suggest Shadow Defra doesn’t want to stay in listening-mode permanently, but while it is I would hope a wide range of organisations and individuals are getting a hearing.

Fortunately, the Shadow DExEU team were a little more forthcoming. At our fringe event Shadow Minister for Brexit Jenny Chapman pledged that Labour would win back the trust of rural and small-town communities, saying Labour would never again go into an election ignoring part of the electorate.

This was music to the ears of those who work for a rural Labour revival, but turning good intentions into votes is going to take a lot of work. I have been talking to Labour candidates who stood unsuccessfully for rural seats at the last election, and the problems these candidates experienced were both very uniform and very challenging. Good community-organising is the foundation of successful insurgent campaigns, but the lack of members in rural areas, and especially the lack of parish councillors and councillors representing rural wards, means it is incredibly hard to identify local issues to organise around in rural areas. The Jeremy Corbyn effect is youth-driven, yet in rural areas there is very little youth vote on which to draw. One candidate told me that the small rural youth vote wasn’t even breaking exclusively for Labour, but was splitting between postal votes from university students, which went to Labour, and young people who worked in land based industries in the area who voted for the Tories. Which brings us back to the importance of a credible agriculture policy.

Not being able to rely on local issues, and not being able to rely on a youth vote, left rural candidates looking for common ground with older voters and families to whom Labour should be able to offer so much, but with whom the cultural divide often proved too wide a chasm to bridge.

If Jenny Chapman’s admirable sentiment is to be delivered, and our questioner from South West Norfolk is to be satisfied, then Labour need to address all of these problems. Engaging with the task of making Brexit work for the countryside needs to be the top priority. Doing so challenges the “polite indifference” that has allowed a cultural disconnect to emerge and signals to those young people staying and working in rural areas that Labour is concerned about their future too. Get this right and rural membership grows, increasing the party’s sensitivity to rural people and local countryside issues. That just might be the key to winning in the countryside, without which there can be no overall Labour majority.

Liam Stokes is Head of Shooting at the Countryside Alliance

Tags: Brexit, Countryside Alliance, Liam Stokes, NFU, rural Labour