Gripping his lectern on stage in Birmingham, Keir Starmer was attempting to win over the ever-sceptical delegates at the National Farmers’ Union congress.

The then-leader of the opposition told attendees of the 2023 iteration of the annual jamboree that he understood their pain, and promised to reset government relations with farming were he fortunate enough to be elected.

“Every day seems to bring a new existential risk to British farming,” he told delegates, in front of an idyllic rural vista of rolling green hills, hedgerows and villages.

“Losing a farm is not like losing any other business,” he went on. “It can’t come back. That’s why the lack of urgency from the government. The lack of attention to detail. The lack of long-term planning. It’s not on. You deserve better than that.”

Just two short two years on – and little more than six months into his party’s long-awaited return to government – and Starmer’s serenade felt like a lifetime ago for the attendees of this year’s conference which took place in London on Tuesday.

Indeed, so sour have relations become that NFU president Tom Bradshaw even felt emboldened enough to call Rachel Reeves a “coward” for not attending.

Despite agenda items ranging from a wonkish panel on trade to the science and technological developments that could boost production and reduce environmental tolls – there was just one topic of conversation.

“We recognise that these are still early days for a new government,” NFU president Tom Bradshaw told delegates – sleeves rolled up – in a barnstorming opening address. “But ministers had hardly found their way to their new desks when they broke their first promise.

“And it’s the one which overshadows all else. Wiping out our ability to plan, to invest and, often, to hope. It hangs over our farms, our families, our future: the Family Farm Tax.”

The ‘tax’ to which Bradshaw referred was the changes announced in Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s inaugural Budget to remove an inheritance tax (IHT) carve out for farmland owners known as the Agricultural Property Relief (APR).

In its place, the government announced a new, less generous IHT provision, that would levy a 20 per cent tax on agricultural estates worth more than £1m.

Reforming the APR, which the government argued had been abused by the wealthy asset owners as a means of avoiding inheritance tax, had long been viewed by highly regarded economists like Dr Arun Advani and respected fiscal think tanks the Institute for Fiscal Studies as one of the more palatable revenue raisers at the new government’s disposal.

But that hasn’t stopped it causing fury among the UK’s farming community, many of whom have engaged in months of protests across London and rest of the UK.

“If they go through unchanged, the changes will bury the farm I work on,” Paul Whiffen, a sixth-generation arable farmer from Oxfordshire told City AM outside the NFU conference centre. “We’re going to have to sell big chunks off to justify it and lose two of our five farmers.”