Jeremy Clarkson Drops A Bombshell At Conference: His Next Pub “Is Not Going To Be In The UK”
I’ve watched JEREMY CLARKSON argue with tractors, sheep, planning officers and the British weather for years now. This was something else. Sitting on stage at the CONSERVATIVE PARTY CONFERENCE beside his long-suffering land agent CHEERFUL CHARLIE IRELAND, JC was funny as ever, but under the jokes he sounded tired and fed up. And then he said something that made the whole room go quiet.
Asked whether he’d ever open another pub, he admitted he is looking “quite hard” at the idea. Then came the twist: it’s not going to be in the UK. When someone asked if he was leaving, he said no. But he followed it with a question I can’t get out of my head: why would anybody start a business in this country right now? The applause said a lot. A minute later he softened it, saying he probably won’t do it but he’s “dreaming of it.” Honestly, that almost hurt more.
A Harvest You Could Fit In Your Pocket
It started with the weather. After another BRUTALLY HOT SUMMER, Jeremy said the farming year at DIDDLY SQUAT was “terrible.” After a full year of hard work, he joked, they ended up with about three ounces of hen food. That’s classic Clarkson, but the message was serious. He remembers the scorching summers of ‘76 and ‘77, after which the weather went back to normal, and he’s clinging to hope that two hot years in a row will be followed by a kinder one.
Charlie, who looks after farms across the country, didn’t sugarcoat it either. Arable farmers are facing RISING COSTS, uncertain markets and swinging prices, and they have less to sell just when prices go up. In his words, CASH HAS NEVER BEEN SO TIGHT on farms. Jeremy was honest about his own luck: he has a quiz show on ITV and his newspaper columns. Most farmers have neither.
The £146,000 Bill That Landed On THE FARMER’S DOG
His pub, THE FARMER’S DOG, is busy. Very busy. But as soon as it reached profitability, along came an extra £146,000 in NATIONAL INSURANCE. The fuel bill has gone up by about £30,000 since the trouble in Iran began. Here’s the part that made me shake my head: in Oxfordshire, in what he called the sixth richest country in the world, the pub can’t get mains power or water. It runs on GENERATORS and BOREHOLES around the clock. His sarcastic plan for what comes next? Open a cinema, because surely that’s a guaranteed growth business.
Why The FAMILY FARM TAX Hits Differently
The best moment, for me, was Jeremy explaining the FAMILY FARM INHERITANCE TAX with a simple comparison. When an ordinary family sells a house after a parent passes on, the new owner knows how doors, windows and cookers work. A farm isn’t like that. Sell part of it and it becomes less profitable. Sell all of it and the new owner may have no idea how to farm it. He pointed to himself: he bought a farm and didn’t know how to run it.
Family farmers, he said, know every square inch, which corner is clay and which is too shady to bother planting, because many of them start helping from the age of three. Someone on stage mentioned that KALEB’s three-year-old is out farming every single day, and JC joked that he asks daily whether there’s a risk assessment for that.
Charlie gave a real example: a 1,000-ACRE family farm surrounded by a pension fund, the church and a foreign investor. The family faces paying roughly 2% a year over ten years when the time comes. Their neighbours won’t.
DEFRA, BOVINE TB And A Three-Day Road Trip
The host pointed out that DEFRA has the smallest budget in Whitehall but 34 quangos, and about one civil servant for every five farmers. Jeremy turned to BOVINE TB, which hit his farm last year and which he called devastating. He went on his own three-day fact-finding trip: Aberystwyth, Pembrokeshire, Nottingham, Coventry, vets, scientists, even Brian May. Every expert had a different answer, and he says it’s government’s job to pull them together into a plan. Right now, he sees no plan. We got a Covid vaccine in months, he said, yet bovine TB has been around for 200 years. If he could learn this much in three days, why can’t someone at DEFRA do the same?
42 BIRD SPECIES And A “Hypothetical” Pond
My favourite part was the nature story. Conservationist HANNAH counted 42 DIFFERENT FARMLAND BIRD SPECIES on Diddly Squat after about a year. Jeremy says he was “accidentally” doing things right, like wider field margins and, well, a pond he’s not allowed to say he dug. “Hypothetically,” a grebe has turned up, and a GREAT CRESTED NEWT. His view: leave farmers alone and the countryside would be better. He admitted there would be some bad apples, but said most farmers want to protect land they plan to hand to their children.
SEVEN MONTHS Waiting For A Car Park
On PLANNING, he has stopped blaming the officers, who he believes are badly overworked. His request for a car park at the farm shop has been waiting since February, about SEVEN MONTHS with no answer. Meanwhile, he says, large solar farms and housing estates seem to go through quickly. How do you run a business like that?
The host quoted something Jeremy once said: a VILLAGE WITHOUT A PUB is just a collection of houses. His idea is to bring back MARKET DAYS in towns like CHIPPING NORTON, with chairs out on the pavement, local produce and maybe a band.
My Take
The session ended on a lighter note. Charlie would be a FENDT tractor, Jeremy a FORD GRANADA GHIA, and Charlie’s meeting with a Labour minister has been postponed for the third time. But I left thinking about that pub abroad. When the man who made Britain fall in love with farming starts dreaming of building somewhere else, people in power should be listening.
