Keir Starmer’s whips office was dealt its first major blow this week when a whopping 69 Labour MPs abstained on a high-profile vote on Chancellor Reeves’ inheritance tax hike on farmers.

On Wednesday the Conservatives used their opposition day to force a vote on Labour’s deeply unpopular plan to tax farmers’ assets over £1million at 20 per cent when they die.

The move prompted 20,000 angry farmers to gridlock central London on November 19, but the government doubled down saying it was a ‘fair and balanced way’ to plug the £22billion black hole.

Kemi Badenoch’s motion to scrap the changes to inheritance tax- widely labelled the ‘family farm tax’- was defeated comfortably by 339 noes to 181 ayes, a majority of 158.

With such a large majority, Labour was never likely to lose the vote.

But as many Labour backbench MPs would not have known of Reeves’ tax hike before her budget, this vote forced them to support or oppose it publicly.

The only other option was to abstain, ie not vote. Commentators often include abstainers when talking about party dissent as by abstaining they are declining to support the government.

Of course, some MPs may have just had more important engagements to attend, but this can’t be true of such a large number of abstainers.

It will be a disappointing result for Labour whips to see such large numbers not supporting the government.

The large number of abstainers also drew furious reaction from voters, with many labelling the MPs as spineless for not standing up for their rural constituents.

GB News has crunched the data and generated a map showing the Labour MPs who abstained on the vote.

This comes after a second protest has been confirmed for December 11 in the UK’s four capitals.

Gareth Wyn Jones, Welsh celebrity farmer, has confirmed his attendance, calling for tractors to descend on UK town centres.

The protest organiser Liz Webster of Save British Farming campaign group has said to ‘expect chaos’ and more tractors than last time.