A convoy of at least 100 tractors driven by supporters of "Save British Farming" and "Fairness for Farmers of Kent" staged a go-slow drive-past in Central London on Monday evening. They then rallied in Westminster, demanding that government ministers reverse the post-Brexit trade deals which have undermined "British farming".

    Yes, even the same deals which were hailed by Brexiteers as great triumphs at the time. And by the way, many farmers were among those who voted for Brexit. But then they got what they voted for, in the form of then foreign secretary Liz Truss, who signed that deal with New Zealand and Australia to import (cheap) lamb and beef, before her brief spell as Prime Minister alongside a lettuce...

    Never mind that these two trade deals were obviously going to upset the Welsh and Wiltshire (and other) sheep and cattle farmers' apple carts. And they have. But even Kent apple farmers' apple carts are upset. Growers cannot afford to invest in new orchards because they have such low returns on the sales of their fruit.

    In fact, the problem facing farmers is twofold. First, they have lost the largest market they had, since Brexit took them out of the EU... yes, an EU which provided the solid (capitalist) protectionism of stable prices! And second, they are now being undermined by much cheaper agricultural imports.

    This problem, is to some extent, shared with EU farmers, whose protests against cheaper Ukrainian produce, for instance, have been taking place in EU capitals for months already. But at least EU farmers still have subsidies in place and an established marketplace.

    Not so for the British. The scheme of special payments which was supposed to compensate for the loss of EU subsidies, post-Brexit, is not fully up and running yet... And anyway, its proposals are highly contested, since they involve all kinds of environmental schemes to be in place before payments will be made. It's a "Catch 22" situation - you can't implement the scheme without investment and you can't get the investment unless you have an up-and-running scheme...

“No to nationalism”

All this said, the politics of the protesting farmers remain highly contradictory, to say the least.

    Today, with Union Jack flags festooning their tractor convoy, they still claim to be "proud British patriots", looking after "British high standards"...

    What has "patriotism" actually got to do with this issue? Yet even the leader of the main campaign leading the protests, Liz Webster, who used to be well-known as an "EU Remainer", presents herself as a "British patriot" today!

    Of course, voting for Brexit was promoted as good and patriotism is always a good "British value", apparently. Yup, that "last refuge of the scoundrel"!

    Under the British flag, Brexiteers sloganised over taking control, getting the country back, reclaiming "British sovereignty" etc., etc..! And now, when Brexit is clearly to blame for most of the farmers' woes, nevertheless, Liz Webster and Nigel Farage find common ground under the Union Jack.

    Farage even came to Westminster on Monday to shake hands, and has been seen at protests in Dover too, looking after his far-right constituency!

    Yet if farmers really did want to take care of their own interests and the "food security" they claim to stand for, they would need to send Farage, his flag and his reactionary nationalist nonsense laced with anti-immigrant racism, packing, once and for all!

“Yes to internationalism”

Yes, because for one thing, in today's interconnected and interdependent world, it is backward-looking and dangerously narrow-minded to talk about the food security of just one isolated "nation", and especially so in the context of the current global crises: wars, famine (Sudan, Somalia.. Gaza) and of course, the ongoing threat from climate change which extends in its repercussions across the whole world: these are by definition, international crises.

    That said, there is no sign of the necessary international "solution" - a plan for humanity's future based on the resources of the whole planet being carefully looked after, on the one and hand, and used efficiently, for all, on the other.

    For good reason. The capitalist system bases itself on the nation state and as it becomes more decrepit, it retreats even more into this unviable isolationism.

    The impotence of its institutions is no better illustrated today than by the so-called "United Nations" whose repeated resolutions for a cease-fire in Gaza have no consequences whatsoever.

    The alternative is a real internationalism based on the common interests of the poor and working classes across the world, because it is only on the basis of this unity that an answer will be found to our common problems: as Karl Marx said, the working man (or woman) has no "country".