An anonymous Labour MP recently told the Guardian that they had spent a lot of time speaking to local farmers who incorrectly believed the new tax changes would affect their farms, when they were in fact exempt. The culprit of such “confusion”? Social media. “In part this is because we barely have any good local newspapers any more,” the MP said. “In the past, even if you disagreed on policy, there was a shared idea of what the basic facts were. That doesn’t exist now.”

A politician blaming social media for members of the public misunderstanding a policy announcement isn’t only patronising toward voters, it’s a stretch of the imagination. Social media isn’t the enemy here; it’s the party’s failure to harness it.

Labour made the critical mistake of not pre-empting how the policy would be met by opponents and farmers. It is designed to close a loophole that would allow the wealthy to buy farms and evade inheritance tax. Real farmers, instead, got caught in the crossfire as numbers were hurled between government and the opposition, resulting in cash-poor, hard-working families feeling as if they were being targeted.

The assurance from the environment secretary, Steve Reed, that only 500 farms would be affected in a single year lacked persuasive energy after thousands of farmers had already taken to the streets – and the idea that 70,000 farms would be affected across a 30-year period had already been........

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