How does Labour become the party of the countryside?

Labour has a mountain to climb to win the next general election. It is a task that we cannot escape or run from. We need new ways of working and new thinking.

To win a majority of just one, Labour will need to gain 126 seats, and to do that we will need to construct the broadest electoral coalition of any winning party in my adult life. It means winning back trust in communities in Scotland, across the North and the Midlands, beating newly elected Tories in red wall seats, taking back North Wales and winning those elusive marginal contests the nation over. And yes, it also means winning seats in rural communities the party has not won in years. We each have a role to play in building that broad electoral coalition, and winning more Labour votes in rural communities is mine.

Keir Starmer and I began this work at NFU president Minette Batters' farm in Wiltshire during a brief respite from lockdown in October 2020. Meeting in her muddy farmyard we both turned up in well-worn wellies, Keir in a bomber jacket. The NFU head looked surprised: the last politician on her farm had stepped out of the ministerial car on a wet day with no coat or wellies.

The inescapable truth is that while the Conservatives take rural voters for granted, Labour hasn't always turned up at all. Too many electoral contests with no Labour candidate to vote for - but, as well as turning up on the ballot paper, Labour needs to be heard and seen in local media, on the doorstep, in council chambers, on the letters page, in the pub and at church fetes.

Act on what is heard

We cannot simply turn up and listen. Crucially, we need to act on what we hear, and turn up in terms of policy and presence as well. Labour is never short on policy, but we need to examine more whether it is always the right policy for all the communities we need to win. Whitehall and Westminster are often accused of making policy for urban areas and then testing it against the needs of rural communities. However, even then, rural communities don't get that much of a look in. That needs to change.

Signalling this long overdue change, Keir's speech to the National Farmers Union annual conference last February launched Labour's Rural England Policy Review. He was our first leader to address the NFU since Gordon Brown thirteen years ago. The instruction from Keir is clear, Labour's next manifesto must offer as much hope and opportunity to people in rural communities as to those who live in towns and cities.

To do that, we must go beyond Labour's comfort zones (such as rural buses), and make an offer to countryside communities that spans the full breadth of policy. The top issues for countryside communities are similar to urban areas but with added complexity: distance, smaller communities, high house prices and low wages. Rural areas are poorly served by a picture postcard view held in Westminster and Whitehall of thatched cottages, rolling countryside and picturesque moorland. You can't eat a view - and Labour's policy offer must reflect the realities of everyday life in rural areas.

Farming is now political

Rural life is more than just farming, but for the very first time since the landmark Agriculture Act of 1948, farming is political again. The 1945 Labour government viewed food production as a national security issue just as much as a driver of employment and landscape management. Since then, the Conservatives and Labour have, by and large, agreed on...