Steve Reed, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, clutched the lectern like it was a riot shield. There was a chance he might need it. All week, he’d been telling farmers that their accountants had got it all wrong, that their fields were worth far less than they thought, that all this money was going to be raised from Other People. Now he was speaking to the Country Land and Business Association, very much the representative body of the Other People in question.

To any Londoners who wanted to satisfy themselves that this week’s protests were all special pleading from a small number of very rich people, Thursday’s conference in Westminster, planned long before the Budget, would have provided ample ammunition. Even the name of the host is a clue. It’s nearly a quarter of a century since it was rebranded from the less proletarian but arguably more honest “Country Landowners’ Association”, but it still calls itself the CLA. The hall was very largely male and white and, there’s no getting away from it, posh. These were the Aldridges, not the Grundys. 

They had one complaint even Reed couldn’t argue with. Last year, he’d told the same conference that Labour wouldn’t change inheritance tax rules. This meant that a farmer following his suggestion of seeking tax advice would have been told something completely different the day before the Budget from the day after it. 

“That was our position at the time,” he said on Thursday. “You deserve an explanation. We did not know the full extent of the country’s financial crisis. None of us could have.” Well, up to a point. The low murmur in the hall suggested that, even if it had passed the current Cabinet by, some people in Britain had noticed that things were a bit of a mess before July.

He tried his best to strike a positive note. He wanted to make farming “more profitable”, though it seems unlikely that Labour MPs are going to support anything that pushes up the price of food. He was working on a “25-year farms roadmap”. I hope those in the room will forgive me for noting that few of them are likely to be with us at the end of that journey.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that in giving Reed the farming brief, Keir Starmer was punishing him for some terrible crime. We can only guess what Reed did. Did he make a crack about Jimmy Savile? Worse, was he overheard being rude about toolmakers? Whatever, the MP for Streatham, a man with no evidence of any previous interest in the countryside, has been forced to buy some very expensive wellies and spend his days being yelled at by people in the sort of check shirts that simply aren’t sold in London. 

Does it matter? After all, we don’t expect the Defence Secretary to be a soldier, or the Education Secretary to be a teacher. But the Ministry of Defence is packed with serving military to fill the political knowledge gap. And even an Education Secretary without children will have attended a school themselves: they’ll understand the concept of education. Farming is something of which there’s much less general comprehension, as ten minutes on social media will confirm. To a society where food can be ordered to the door within minutes, where weather is something viewed through the window, a world where an unexpected morning’s rain can cost thousands is utterly alien. There’s no evidence the DEFRA ministerial team has more grasp of it than any other city dwellers.

After his speech, Reed sat down for a tense and tightly controlled chat with journalists: one question each, no follow-ups. A Treasury official was on the phone in case things got difficult – despite the Treasury being literally 100 yards away, they had wisely opted to keep their distance. Reed stuck to his line. He had been assured that most farmers wouldn’t be affected. They were angry about lots of things, the inheritance tax was simply the final straw. There is truth in that, though he skated past the fact that the Budget itself had contained several other straws, loading other costs onto farmers as employers, and including an unexpected change to farm payments. 

But the impression of a man badly out of his depth persisted. When Farmers’ Guardian magazine asked a question about how tenant farmers would be affected, Reed didn’t mention them in his reply. Although metropolitan scorn has, not entirely unreasonably, been poured on very wealthy people complaining that their way of life is under threat, changing the rules has impacts on those who rent land to farm from other people. These are farmers whom it would be very hard to describe as fat cats. Has Reed thought about this? It’s unlikely he has many coming to see him in his Streatham surgeries.

Don’t blame Steve Reed, guys. He’s hating this even more than you

Finally, we asked whether it wouldn’t make more sense, as many of those learning for the first time about farming economics have asked, for farmers to simply sell up and do something else? “Oh my goodness me, no!” Reed said, apparently shocked at the idea. “No, no, no! I really want to support family farming, such an important part of the countryside.” This, at least, is in line with what those doing the farming say. But despite Reed’s protestations, it’s not at all clear that it’s what the Treasury officials at the other end of the phone line think. Or perhaps they simply don’t understand the issues.

After Reed had left, the event became cheerier, with much chat about how to make rural businesses work better. At one point, in a discussion on supermarkets, someone asked about fake farms, the brands created by supermarkets to give their products a homespun air. These are, unsurprisingly, loathed by people with actual farms. Reed, we suddenly realised, was a political version. Lacking any experienced MPs with a farming connection, Starmer was forced to create a fake DEFRA Secretary. Don’t blame Steve Reed, guys. He’s hating this even more than you.