Jim Fairlie: Within six months of a Labour government we’ve seen tractor rallies all over the UK

When former farmer Jim Fairlie was appointed Minister for Agriculture and Connectivity by Humza Yousaf in February last year, it was amid accusations of a central belt bias from the SNP government and that rural Scotland had become an afterthought.  

There were also clear divisions in the party. Some MSPs were publicly calling on Yousaf to end the Bute House Agreement with the Scottish Greens, and more were urging it in private. Then, just two months after Fairlie’s appointment to the frontbenches, Yousaf resigned as first minister, facing a vote of no-confidence. 

John Swinney, who had been planning not to run for Holyrood at the Scottish Parliament election next year, stepped in as the new leader of the SNP alongside Kate Forbes as his deputy first minister. It marked the beginning of an early shift in the party’s fortunes. In the months following the general election, which saw the SNP’s representation at Westminster heavily slashed, the party has been able to regain some traction with the public, if national polling for the upcoming election is to be believed. 

Fairlie, a former shepherd and the founder of Scotland’s first farmers’ market, was brought in to help the Scottish Government reconnect with rural Scotland and says under Swinney “the entire government” has been striving for that. “There has been a reset and an acknowledgement to make sure that we are governing for the whole of Scotland. That has been John Swinney’s mantra for as long as I have known him, and I have known him since I was a wee boy.

“There’s a need to listen to people,” he says, suggesting that while there may not have been enough of that in previous years, it is not a Scotland-specific issue. “It’s not just about what’s happening here in Scotland, it’s what’s happening in England and the rest of the UK and in America. Every single politician has got to get ahead of the fact that this Farage-Trump populism is gaining traction.  

“And it’s gaining traction because people are saying ‘you aren’t listening to us any more. We know all the things that they [Reform UK] are, but we’d still rather vote for them because you’re letting us down’, and if any politician here in this place [Holyrood] hasn’t taken that onboard, then they’re missing something.” 

I ask him if he thinks it is as simple as some people no longer feeling that mainstream parties in Scotland can improve their standard of living. He disagrees and says, despite it being an unpopular topic, that, as a population, Scotland has not recovered from the effects of the pandemic. He offers his own experience. 

“My dad caught it and was 81 or 82 at the time. He was extremely ill to the point where doctors asked if they could try an experimental drug. And through the gasps of air – he could literally get two words out before he had to put the oxygen mask back on – he asked ‘what is the alternative?’ They said, ‘you’ll be dead’. There were no other options left. 

“And so, he took it, and it worked. But as his breathing was recovering, he went into delirium, and that lasted for about three to four months. The early stages of that were absolutely brutal. I would go and see him in hospital and he had flooded his room because he’d turned the tap on and forgot he’d done it, or I’d go in to see him sitting on the bed swinging his legs back and forward just looking down, or have his housecoat over the top of his head standing looking at the corner of a room. 

“He was completely gone, and we weren’t sure if he was going to recover from it.” 

After around four months the delirium subsided, but Fairlie knew something still wasn’t right, and he says as a “direct result” of the delirium his father now has dementia, which was a “direct result of Covid”. 

“I now have power of attorney for my dad, which affects my life every single day. Now, I’m not asking people to get the violins out here, and we’re all fed-up with talking about the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis, we just want things to be better, but there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people who have lost someone, caring for someone, lost their job, or their job changed [as a result of the pandemic]. The world changed, and we haven’t caught up with it yet.” 

He says there is “no doubt we have got things wrong”, arguing “you can’t have been in government” for as long as the SNP has and “not have got things wrong”, but the administration is now “asking how we put things right”.  “The party had splits in it, and John Swinney has brought it back together. His message is we need to make this work because nobody else is going to do it.” 

Speaking to Holyrood ahead of the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election, in which much of the SNP’s campaign messaging suggested it was a choice between the SNP and Reform, Fairlie’s assertions of where the party is at the moment have been dampened by the result. 

It was a seat few people outside of Scottish Labour expected Anas Sarwar’s party to win, with most commentators, and the first minister, suggesting that it was aiming for second place. But it showed there are many Scots who still need to be persuaded by the SNP if it is to return to government for a fifth time in a row next May. 

While it was a win for Labour earlier this month, since the general election it’s hard to argue that the UK Government hasn’t dented Sarwar’s chances of being the next resident of Bute House. Since coming to power, it has made a raft of unpopular decisions such as welfare reforms that many groups warn will cause more people to fall into poverty, ending the winter fuel payment for pensioners (which has since been reinstated in part), increasing the employers’ contribution to National Insurance and placing an inheritance tax on farms. 

Fairlie says that latter issue has changed the long-term outlook for family farmers who now must pay 20 per cent inheritance tax on assets over £1.5m. “Any time in Europe if there is a problem for farmers, tractors are out on the street. We’ve seen it before, burning tyres and spreading slurry in front of government buildings. And within six months of a Labour government, we’ve seen tractor rallies all over the UK, not just in Scotland. To me, that is really significant.  

“Then the UK Government shut them [farmers] down, and was saying ‘no, we’ve got this right’, while everyone else is saying ‘you’ve got this wrong’.  

“The Scottish Government made it clear – looking to tax people who are tying money up in land is a good idea, but you’ve got to do it in the right way so that you’re not affecting family farms and the food security of this country.” 

Fairlie says the decision will affect “the very fabric of rural life”. And it comes at a time when there are serious warnings from the National Farmers Union (NFU) Scotland over rising costs for farmers.  

In December, the union commended that “crucial schemes” such as the Basic Payment Scheme, Greening, Less Favoured Area Support Scheme, and Voluntary Coupled Support were all protected in this year’s budget. However, it said the £680m allocated to agriculture represented a “real terms decline” in value.  

NFU Scotland president Martin Kennedy said that “while falling short on our justified budgetary asks”, the budget “provides guarantees that key support schemes will be delivered”. 

Fairlie is upbeat about the allocation for the sector. “We committed to direct payments, and we’ve put in schemes that protected livestock production. These are schemes that are making the industry more resilient and at the same time ask them to do more to reduce emissions and protect biodiversity,” he says. 

However, he is critical of how funding has changed since Brexit. Now allocated through Barnett consequentials, as opposed to ring-fenced funding through the Common Agricultural Policy under the EU that saw 17 per cent of the UK’s funding allocated to Scotland, it now receives around nine per cent. 

“That fact that the UK Government is not ring-fencing funding – and when you look at what is happening south of the border in terms of the schemes, like the Sustainable Farming Fund, that was brought in and then cut with no warning – if you have any understanding of farming at all, you don’t make decisions like that. You need to be planning long-term. A farmer that buys bulls doesn’t expect anything from that purchase for three years; they need the market to deliver for them in three years after that purchase. 

“I speak to folk who are connected to farmers down south and they consistently say, ‘you are lucky to have the relationship with the Scottish Government that you do’.”

He adds: “Budgets are tight, there’s no doubt about that – we should have been increasing the budget, but we can’t. The Scottish budget is what it is.” 

As well as reporting to the rural affairs secretary, Fairlie also has connectivity in his brief and reports to the transport secretary. He tells me that “rural connectivity is much harder than urban connectivity”, which is no secret.  

He says he and Fiona Hyslop have been working to understand how they can improve bus services in rural communities, while he acknowledges that the Scottish Government’s track record with ferries “has been hard”.  

But he’s optimistic about seeing big improvements before the election. “The transport secretary has announced she is standing down and I would like to think we are on the cusp of things dramatically improving.  

“Take a step back from all the politics and ask what is happening. We’ve got Glen Sannox and Rosa which will be in service, four that are being constructed in Turkey which will be delivered over this year, we have small vessel replacement work happening. So, in the next 18 months, we’ll see around 30 per cent of our fleet replaced. That is going to make a huge difference in island connectivity.” 

It’s clear Fairlie has a lot of work on his plate, but you can feel the positivity he has for rural Scotland. Following up on the last time he spoke to Holyrood, not long after he suffered a heart attack in September 2023, Fairlie took up running again in the wake of the major health scare. I ask how his health is now. 

“I did Couch to 5K, it gave me a target to run, but once I completed it, I stopped. I am looking after myself, but it’s really hard to get out and run, I don’t know how John Swinney does it. I’ve yet to learn the discipline of getting out and going. 

“But health-wise I feel grand – fit and healthy, and enjoying the job.”