Nocturnal 
Jeremy Clarkson walked out on stage at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham on Monday and told delegates it had been an “absolute disaster” of a year for his farm. The surprise appearance saw the Clarkson’s Farm star joke that so few people were in the audience that “a lot of people have come dressed as seats”.
Clarkson, 66, was introduced by shadow environment secretary Victoria Atkins and appeared alongside Charlie Ireland, his land agent and Clarkson’s Farm co-star, for a question-and-answer session, as reported by the BBC.
A “terrible” year on Diddly Squat
Asked how farming had gone at his Oxfordshire farm, Diddly Squat, this year, Clarkson didn’t hold back. “It’s terrible, is the only way of describing it,” he said, according to LBC. “We worked really hard all year and we ended up with, I think I’m right in saying, three ounces of hen food.”
He blamed the hot weather for the poor harvest, but said farmers more generally were being squeezed from every direction. “It’s not just the weather,” he said. “The attacks come from everywhere – whether it’s Iran or Ukraine or taxes or energy costs – whatever it might be, it’s just relentless.”
Clarkson also used the platform to vent about running costs at his pub, The Farmer’s Dog, near the farm. The Sun reported he said National Insurance contributions at the pub had risen sharply, and that his fuel bill had gone up by £30,000 “since the Iran business”. He said he’d considered opening a second pub abroad to escape the costs, joking: “I’ll see if I can do it abroad somewhere. I probably won’t, but I’m dreaming of it.” Pressed on the state of UK enterprise, he asked bluntly: “Why would anybody set up a business in this country right now?”
The inheritance tax battle
Clarkson has been a prominent campaigner against Labour’s inheritance tax changes for farms, first announced by then-chancellor Rachel Reeves in the 2024 budget, which capped full agricultural property relief at £1 million. Following a vocal farmers’ campaign, the government watered the policy down in December 2025, raising the threshold to £2.5 million.
Speaking to City A.M., Clarkson said he didn’t think officials had understood the policy’s impact on family farms. “With a farm it’s completely different because you’d have to sell a bit of it, making it even less profitable, or you’d sell the whole lot,” he said, adding that passing farms to children made practical sense “for the way the countryside looks and our food supply system”.
A government source responded: “We are working with farmers to strengthen domestic food production and make supply chains more resilient as we build a stronger and more profitable farming sector together.”
What happens next
Clarkson’s intervention came two days before Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is expected to use her conference speech on Wednesday to call for further inheritance tax cuts, having described the tax as “immoral” over the weekend, according to City A.M. A party spokesman said any specific announcement remained “pure speculation” for now.
The Conservatives have already outlined more than £47 billion in spending cuts across welfare and aid, with roughly half earmarked for tax cuts and the rest for paying down government debt.
For now, Clarkson says he’s leaning on “other income streams” to keep going. “I’m very fortunate that I do have other income streams and newspaper columns,” he said, “but if you’re an ordinary farmer, it’s not just the weather.”
