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“Farmers descended on Westminster in a convoy of tractors to protest the tax changes”, Politico reported on Wednesday afternoon, after owners of multi-million pound land and property-holdings blocked the roads around Parliament.
The protest, over moves to introduce inheritance tax for the largest estates, saw dozens – perhaps hundreds – of tractors effectively blockading swathes of central London.
By Thursday, the protest had fallen off the agenda, with only the Financial Times featuring the demonstration against inheritance tax on their front page.
All of which is odd, because when reports emerged in 2021 of Insulate Britain climate protesters apparently blocking ambulances in central London, it received furious, wall-to-wall coverage and condemnation in the press and on television and radio discussion shows. The same goes for nearly every other climate protest that has slowed traffic in London over the past five years.
A report from GB News that August received widespread write-ups from other outlets, despite there not appearing to be any actual footage of climate protesters blocking an ambulance. One image of apparently-delayed ambulances in October that year got a write-up from the Daily Mirror and others.
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This Wednesday however, while trying to get a bus that had been delayed by the farmers’ protest, I walked along Westminster bridge, as tractors slowly crawled over the Thames to the streets surrounding the South Bank – and St Thomas’ Hospital. The HQ of the London Ambulance Service is also nearby.
The roads around Waterloo were carnage, as traffic slowed to a trickle, impeded by dozens of tractors laden with banners and honking horns. And unlike many of the tabloids that railed against Insulate Britain and others, we actually have footage showing what happened. There were more trying to make their way under the tunnel, judging by the sounds of the sirens.
I watched (and filmed) as ambulances struggled to make their way through. Most tractors did try to move to the side. But London’s roads are not designed for s