It's in the Graun, so it must be true!
Why our landed gentry are so desperate to stay in the EU
Giles Fraser
Thursday 21 April 2016 16.46 BST
The common agricultural policy takes from the poor and gives to the rich. Its effects can be felt in every British household, and seen in the deadly waters of the Mediterranean too

‘A massive 38% of the entire 2014-20 EU budget is allocated as subsidies for European farmers. It is far and away the biggest item of euro expenditure, about €50bn a year.’ Photograph: Stuart Black/Alamy
The estate agent Carter Jonas established its reputation running the estates of the Marquess of Lincolnshire. “Some of the biggest property owners in the country are our loyal clients,” boasts its website. And, in a recent poll of these landowning clients, 67% of them said that Britain should stay in the EU.
So why all this Euro-enthusiasm in the Tory heartlands and among the landed gentry? “Should the UK vote to leave the EU, the CAP subsidies will likely be reduced,” Tim Jones, head of Carter Jonas’s rural division, explained. Thank you, Tim, for putting it so clearly. We understand.
A massive 38% of the entire 2014-20 EU budget is allocated as subsidies for European farmers. It is far and away the biggest item of euro expenditure, about €50bn a year. If these billions were being used to prop up a heavy industry – steel, for example – then the neoliberals would be up in arms, complaining like mad that if an industry can’t cope with a free market then it should be left to die. Creative destruction, they call it. But, for some reason, when it comes to agriculture, different rules apply.
Farms are not called “uneconomic” in the same way that pits and factories are. So every British household coughs up about £250 a year and hands it over to the EU, which hands it over to people like the Duke of Westminster – already worth £7bn himself. In 2011, the duke received £748,716 in EU subsidies for his various estates. So, too, Saudi Prince Bandar (he of the dodgy al-Yamamah arms deal), who pocketed £273,905 of EU money for his estate in Oxfordshire. The common agricultural policy is socialism for the rich. It’s a mechanism to buttress the aristocracy – who own a third of the land in this country – from the chill winds of economic liberalism.
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2016/apr/21/why-our-landed-gentry-are-so-desperate-to-stay-in-the-eu