The BlackRock Connection and a Nightmare for Farmers

JOHN SADLER

THE current intriguing question is what could the US multinational investment behemoth BlackRock (‘BRK’) possibly have in common with a left-wing British elected government? Founded in 1988, BRK, with assets in excess of $11.5trillion, is active in enterprise risk management, a fixed-income institutional asset manager which has frequently been heavily censured for supporting extraction of fossil fuels, the international arms trade and a slew of human rights abuses.

According to The Canary last month: ‘Just days ago, climate groups Friends of the Earth US and Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) submitted a complaint to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Their complaint alleges that BlackRock have been directly contributing to environmental and human rights abuses around the world through its investments in agribusiness.

‘The complaint lays out how BlackRock has invested in companies that are destroying rainforests, and with them eradicating sorely needed biodiversity. The asset management company are also accused of human rights abuses in what Friends of the Earth call “an epidemic of violence”.’

Why, we would have to wonder, should such an amoral capitalist adventurer be welcomed so gushingly into the very heart of Downing Street? ‘I’m determined to deliver growth, create wealth and put more money in people’s pockets,’ the Prime Minister wrote on November 21. ‘This can only be achieved by working in partnership with leading businesses, like BlackRock, to capitalise on the UK’s position as a world leading hub for investment.’

This, apparently, is nothing new. Ethan Stone of openDemocracy wrote: ‘On 21 November in Downing Street, senior executives from BlackRock, one of the world’s most controversial companies, sat down opposite Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves. The government’s laser-focus on private investment as the key means of driving economic growth has inevitably led to a reliance on the world’s big money machines, like BlackRock.’
What price socialism? St Jeremy the Unlamented of Islington would surely disapprove.

This is a relationship that Labour developed in opposition and which has become even cosier since the party entered government, with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink making a star turn at Labour’s investment summit last month and posing for pictures with the PM when Starmer visited New York in September. Senior BlackRock figures were there, too, when No 10 held a summer reception for business leaders.

Should we be worried? Yes. We should be very worried indeed.
With their most recent Budget, Labour have raised a chorus of anger and alarm from the farming community. They have proposed that from April 2026, inheritance tax (IHT) relief for business and agricultural assets will be capped at £1million, a new reduced rate of 20 per cent being charged above that (rather than the standard 40 per cent rate). Tax due can be paid by interest-free annual instalments spread over ten years. Now, what might this have to do with BRK? According to Daniel Priestley of Dent Global who tweeted on November 22, possibly quite a lot.

Watch out British Farmers, This is how @Keir_Starmer ‘s new best buddies at BlackRock are going to screw you over in 7 steps …

1. They will start buying up small plots of agricultural land at double the normal price. They will issue a directive to all of their energy…

— Daniel Priestley (@DanielPriestley) November 22, 2024

While it must be said this is wholly speculative, the idea alone should send shivers not just down farmers’ spines but every one of us. At the outset BRK will unobtrusively begin scooping up parcels of farming land but paying way above the odds. In concert, they’ll direct all their energy companies to secure land for carbon capture. Their cohorts will appear to bid against each other thus pushing the cost of land up to levels no farmer, needing a return on investment, can hope to compete with. For some sellers this must seem like a welcome boom. It’s not.

A net effect will be to push agricultural land values to new and wholly false levels. So, when a farmer dies and his estate is assessed for IHT, the asset will suddenly, in HMRC terms, be worth far more than before. The heirs will have no viable means of paying the tax: ‘In swoops a BlackRock subsidiary with a “Agri Debt Finance Tax Relief” product to lend them 20 per cent of the “value” of their farm so they can pay the taxes’.

No free lunches here. Any borrowing will come loaded with restrictive terms, say that the farm shall henceforth be run in a particular way, that the new farmer will be tied into BRK products, plant, software etc, a set of conditions that steer the target farm towards an ‘interface with the larger conglomerate’. So, tomorrow’s UK kulaks will be forcibly collectivised. Not by Uncle Joe and his Chekists but by their capitalist equivalent. Ask any Ukrainian how that process played out.

Many farms will fail. No worries, BRK or its stooges will already have a contractual right to buy up the assets that precludes sale by auction. Now this may be tricky as the farmer’s clearers probably have first call and the preferred creditors will have to be dealt with. But, hey, even if BRK has to buy at auction, they’ll still be getting a bargain. Economies of scale will facilitate increasing profitability. Priestley suggests, perhaps a step too far, that government could arrange with BRK to utilise illegal immigrants as farm labour.

Too Orwellian perhaps? Well, watch this space!

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This article (The BlackRock connection and a nightmare for farmers) was created and published by Conservative Woman and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author John Sadler