Last week farmers returned to Westminster, continuing to vent their anger as the Government pressed ahead with its decision to levy inheritance tax on farms, in stark contrast to the promises Labour politicians gave before the election. More broadly, the so-called “family farm tax” is the most visible sign of a growing trend. Where Labour say “difficult choices” need to be made, it seems to mean rural communities being asked to shoulder a disproportionate share of the burden while Government priorities are focused elsewhere.

It is not just a swathe of other tax and spending choices that hit rural areas, including scrapping the £100 million rural services grant for councils and freezing environmental grants to farmers. Large areas of the countryside will now need to be covered with new solar farms, turbines, or pylons to deliver on Labour’s Net Zero energy plans.

Indeed, one of Ed Miliband’s first acts as Energy Secretary was to give the go ahead to three controversial large-scale solar farms. Instead of trying to work constructively with rural people, he has pledged to “take on” those that oppose his approach.

The same thinking can be seen in plans to bypass local democracy to build new prisons on greenbelt land, potentially extending the same approach to data centres, giving rural areas more stretching housing targets than urban ones, and watering down protections for agricultural land in planning rules.

That isn’t to say new housing and infrastructure aren’t needed. But Labour seems to be setting up conflict after conflict with rural communities by treating them in a way that suggests their concerns will always be met with indifference or even disdain. Instead, the government should work with rural areas, not against them, to develop in a way that ensures these communities feel the benefits and grows the rural economy, as well as ensuring that land best suited to producing food is farmed.

Labour recognised there was no route to power without rural communities, with Keir Starmer

 saying in a Country Life interview: “I want everyone living in the countryside to know that I am determined to roll up my sleeves and restore that bond of respect.” That promise has already fallen flat, with Defra Secretary Steve Reed even suggesting farmers voicing concerns around inheritance tax changes are “wealthy tax avoiders”.

Recent polling for the Country Land and Business Association shows that nearly a quarter of those who voted Labour in rural seats last July are now unhappy with their choice. Given the vast majority of next year’s local elections are in country councils, Labour’s strategists may soon be asking themselves if targeting rural communities with greater costs is really an easy way out of difficult choices?

Iain Carter is a former Conservative Party Political Director who has also served as a Special Adviser in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.