UK minister’s $550 rubber boots outrage farmers – reports
The UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Steve Reed has angered farming communities after being pictured sporting £420 (approx $541) rubber boots.
The minister was photographed with former National Farmers’ Union president Minette Batters while wearing Le Chameau wellies, said to be a piece of exclusive hand-crafted footwear, according to its manufacturer. The boots’ “premium leather lining is complemented by a leather insole” and they come in the “iconic green” color.
The minister’s wellies, however, were likely not purchased by Reed himself but rather gifted by Lord Waheed Alli, a major Labour donor and one of the directors of Le Chameau, media reports suggested. At the time the posh wellies were presumably donated, they cost £270, just below the £300 threshold requiring them to get registered among members’ interests.
Environment Secretary Steve Reed in his £420 wellies ... The labour government seems to be using Orwell's Animal Farm as an instruction manual. The British people are being trolled by their own government pic.twitter.com/KpfYORnkMW
— Stephen Russell (@russellsg) November 2, 2024
The fashion choice has caused an uproar among British farmers, who have not minced words in their attack on the minister.
“You’ll never see a farmer who wears £400 wellies, because we’re getting them covered in muck every day,” says Aled Thomas, a farmer and Conservative councillor in Pembrokeshire, Wales, told The Telegraph. The people “are feeling quite insulted” over the display, he added.
If the minister sought to connect with the farmers through picking rubber boots, he had clearly failed to do so, Andrew Court, a farmer from Staffordshire, told the newspaper.
“They’re absolutely not the kind of wellies a farmer would wear,” he said. “Anything above £100 is not really appropriate for farming, it’s for driving your Chelsea tractor, that sort of thing.”
The wellies scandal came on top of remarks Reed made earlier this week ahead of budget hearings. Speaking to The Guardian, the minister urged farmers and conservationists to “learn to do more with less,” while blaming the budget difficulties on the fact the UK was apparently “among the most nature-depleted countries in the world.”
While the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) budget itself remained flat, the government unveiled a plan to levy inheritance tax at an effective rate of 20% on the value of business and agricultural assets over £1 million (nearly $1.3 million). Previously, farmlands were exempted from the tax, and the change, expected to enter force from April 2026, has been widely perceived as the end for many family farms.
