Watching the Laura Kuenssberg show on Sunday, in the wake of last week’s Labour budget, it was clear to see how little the Chancellor understands island and rural communities, how complex the food production chain is and how many people depend on it for their livelihoods.

As importantly, it is very clear that she either did not know, or worse, did not care, what the net effect of her budget decisions would have on farming communities here in Scotland.

At one of my regular meetings of local NFU members in Perth, my Westminster colleagues Pete Wishart MP and Dave Doogan MP were also in attendance and Dave recited the very negative reaction in the Chamber as she made her announcements, and how she looked surprised as though she couldn’t quite understand why.

Perhaps that is the glimmer of hope the sector needs to be able to call for a rethink on some of those decisions.

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Before the election there was a clear and united voice across the country that farming needed to see multi-annual ring fenced funding, increased from the previous levels, and the Bew Review recommendations implemented for collective engagement to agree the principles of future intra-UK allocations. That was the right call, it would ensure the same certainty we had while we were in the EU. Instead, Labour’s Brexit Britain approach to farming is worse than before.

The removal of ring fencing and Barnetising the funding was always one of the biggest fears from the day after the Brexit vote, and the Labour party have done it.

Scotland has traditionally, and rightly, seen a bigger than population share of the funding for agriculture when it was allocated from the EU, for all the reasons we understand. That has now been reversed. There is still a need for clarity on how long the baselining will be held for, but the soundings are not positive. This could effectively see a massive cut in the funding for agriculture from Westminster, but it will be hidden from view by the fact that it has now been rolled into the Block grant.

They have also imposed changes to Agricultural Property Relief (APR) and made these announcements with absolutely no discussion with the devolved nations, despite the colossal contribution that agriculture makes to the Scottish economy. I am wondering now if my optimism of a reset in relationships between Westminster and the Holyrood Governments was justified, when decisions like this that could see family farms in Scotland devastated and not a single word was spoken by them or views sought as to the ramifications of their proposals.

This budget has been a wrecking ball to agriculture. It has devastated certainty of support, it has destroyed succession planning for family farms. We need folk coming in, we need young folk with their energy, ideas with ambitions and hope for a future career, not abandoning it and cutting stock numbers, risking food security and environmental and biodiversity gains we have made up to now.

If the chancellor wants to build that kind of working partnership that we have forged, then reversing the catastrophic decisions she has made so far may be a start.