Rachel Reeves has lost Labour the election and sent farmers to Reform UK

Labour has "knocked out" its chances of a second term in power and sent voters into the arms of Reform UK by launching a tax raid on farming families. This tough message comes from a trailblazing barrister and Labour peer who is dismayed at the distress her party has caused in the "unloved" countryside. Baroness Ann Mallalieu - who has lived in the national spotlight since she became the first female president of the Cambridge Union in 1967 - has no intention of hiding harsh truths from Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves.

Noting that the Chancellor was recently seen in tears in the Commons chamber, she says: "I would have to say, she has caused a great many people to be in tears. A great many."

Now 79, the baroness says she knows of two people who are so worried about the coming changes in inheritance tax for farms they are "genuinely threatening suicide" before the new rules take effect.

She says she is "absolutely certain" the decision to levy a 20% tax on inherited agricultural assets above £1million is stopping people from investing in their farms.

"If the Chancellor wanted productivity she couldn't have thought of a worst way to produce it," she says.

As a defence barrister, she was among the country's high profile QCs. And in her defence of rural communities she has served for more than a quarter of a century as president of the Countryside Alliance.

Her family used to "swap pigs" with Labour legend and NHS pioneer Aneurin Bevan, but she laments the lack of understanding about the countryside among MPs today.

"Unfortunately," she says, "at the moment we have quite a lot of politicians who think they know about the countryside because they have a weekend cottage they go to from time to time but [they] have absolutely no idea how their neighbours live."

There are "very, very few people", she says, "who have any direct contact with farming now".

The consequences of the tax raid for Labour at the next election, she warns, threaten to be terrible.

"I have to say I think what they have done so far is to knock out the possibility of another term in office. It is not possible for a Labour Government to have an overall majority unless they have rural seats."

And she is in no doubt who will reap the electoral benefits.

"I'm afraid what they have also done is to drive people to Reform," she says.

Labour MPs in rural constituencies are "very" worried, she claims, and she now lives in hope of a u-turn.

Farming can be a "very lonely job" at the best of times, but she warns of a "profound depression" in the countryside with people suffering "sleepless nights" because of the Government's policies.

Her love affair with farming began when her parents moved the family to "a very rural village in darkest Buckinghamshire where as well as Nye Bevan's pigs they had "a house cow and some calves".

A farmer let the local children clamber onto the tractor and help with his dairy cows and she was "mad to ride" ponies from the age of four.

"That started it," she says. "I always wanted to farm."

When her legal career took off she rented a cottage and kept "a lot of poultry", and when her husband and her bought "somewhere with a little bit of land" she invested in a flock of sheep.

"I used to be lambing sheep during the night and then go off to the Old Bailey," she says.

She worked alongside Sir John Mortimer of Rumpole of the Bailey fame and she looks back at this time as a "golden patch".

"His speeches to the jury would have them holding their sides with laughter," she remembers.

The pair often defended pornography cases. Sir John "hated" having to look at the films and books.

He would often dispatch the future baroness to examine the exhibits, saying: "You go and look at them because the jury will think if you've seen them they can't be that bad."

These were days when a female barrister was considered "unusual".

"There were judges then who made no secret of the fact they didn't think women should be at the bar at all," she recalls. "But after a while they became some of my best friends."

The attention was not unwelcome for someone at the start of her career.

"What was important was to be remembered," she explains.

She seemed destined to make her mark in public life.

Her grandfather, uncle and father were MPs and she shattered a glass ceiling when as a student at Newnham College she became union president.

"There were 16 men to every woman in Cambridge," she remembers. "I had the most wonderful time."

Her presidency led to a 1968 invitation to appear on Desert Island Discs. She picked Twist and Shout by The Beatles as her favourite book and decided to take to her island hideaway the collected works of Jane Austen and a four-poster bed.

Today, she lives on a smallholding on the edge of Exmoor National Park - and she revels in life in the hunting community.

"If you really want to take out someone you fancy," she says, "you take a pretty girl out on a quad bike for a day's hunting. That's what you do."

Hunts bring together people from all backgrounds, she insists, hitting away the stereotype "it's all toffs".

London, she says, is a "different world" where people live according to another set of values and do not have the same relationship with nature as their counterparts in the country.

"Here," she says, "your life is governed by the seasons and the weather".

She has had adventures in both town and country, and as a champion of farmers in Parliament she continues to live in both worlds. A sense of both gratitude and mission runs through her conversation.

"I have had a very lucky life," she says.

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