Are protestors a force for good or a social nuisance who need tearing off a strip? You’ll not be surprised to hear it all depends.

The other day York was filled with tractors driven by grumbling farmers. It was quite a sight, all those mammoth wheels rolling through the city, thrilling in a way, even if you didn’t really agree. On the bus at the time, I kept my heckles to myself.

A similar but much larger protest snarled up London, too.

In footage shared on social media, the progress of an ambulance through the capital appeared to be impeded by a rumbling phalanx of tractors. This caused the usual antisocial squabble. Some said, with a marked lack of politeness, that it was a lie to say the ambulance had been blocked by the farmers. Others insisted just as strongly that it had.

Whatever the case, when the same scenario arose during Just Stop Oil protests, assorted newspapers, right-wing pundits and general grouches raised a raucous chorus demanding the protestors be arrested and sent to prison.

Subsequently, five environmental activists behind protests that brought part of the M25 to a standstill were jailed for four and five years apiece.

The people who whined then about blocking roads to save the planet stayed curiously silent on farmers causing a similar ruckus.

You need to be wearing your double-standards lenses to see what’s going on here. In populist shorthand, farmers protesting about changes to inheritance tax are heroes, while those who wring their hands about our rapidly fraying environment are social pariahs who deserve to be cast out (or imprisoned).

If you are Judith Woods writing a column for the Daily Telegraph: “The farmers have taught climate militants a lesson in how to protest with civility.”

Take off those glasses for a moment. Is it really civilised to block up towns and cities with muddy tractors? Isn’t it civilised to stick up for the planet? Surely some farmers might even agree with the environmental protestors.

All those banners proclaiming No Farmers, No Food – while strictly speaking true – could just as easily be replaced by ones saying: No Planet, No Food.

It is also possible to feel for ordinary farmers – and to believe that what the government is trying to do is basically right.

For those targeted by the change are multimillionaires who snaffle up farmland to avoid paying inheritance tax (we’re looking at you for a start, Jeremy Clarkson).

This was something even the Daily Express noticed in June last year, under the headline: Rich snap up farmland to exploit inheritance tax loophole. The Express and other papers at the time reported that the value of agricultural land was hitting record highs as the wealthy sought loopholes to avoid inheritance tax.

Suddenly, Labour tries to do something about that, and they are the villains.

Mind you, one trouble with Keir Starmer’s party right now is that nothing seems thought through. Why did no-one predict the farmers’ fury and head them off at the gate? In the same vein, the ending of the winter fuel payment for the majority of pensioners seems to have caused more bad feeling than it has raised good money (says a man who is £200 or so down on the deal).

One suspicion of those protesting farmers lay in seeing Nigel Farage and his suspiciously clean wellies joining the march. This, remember, is the man whose beloved Brexit caused more harm to farmers than just about anything.

The leader of Reform UK is an extremely wealthy man – supported by other extremely wealthy men. A wealthy man who sucks up to men higher in the money tree, hoping for a pocketful of their dosh.

Never has a man of the people been so rich and so disconnected from the people he pretends to represent.

Never has a man of such scant scruple been so willing to exploit any situation to his own advantage. Never has… oh, just join the dots.

Labour, the Tories, the Lib-Dems, the Greens – the whole lot of them – need to keep reminding voters that Farage knows how to kick up a distraction, knows how to pick an empty-vessel fight, while having no real answers to anything. An immoral sort of fantasy politics that could become a horrible reality.

Whenever Farage is questioned strongly by a journalist, he kicks off, and retreats in a sulking stomp. A sure sign that he needs to be asked as many tough questions as possible.

Disgruntled farmers? Oh, they’re just today’s grist to his self-serving mill.