Jeremy Clarkson has issued a grim assessment of the financial outlook for his Oxfordshire pub, the Farmer's Dog, describing conditions as "pretty terrible" in the wake of government tax changes.
Writing in his column for The Times, the former Top Gear presenter painted a bleak picture for hospitality businesses facing a double blow from increased business rates and higher employer national insurance contributions.
The television personality and farmer suggested that passing these additional costs onto customers was simply not viable.
He pointed to households already struggling with substantial energy bills.
Jeremy Clarkson voiced concerns about his pub, The Farmer's Dog
| PAHe also noted that proposed changes to drink driving regulations would make it even harder for rural pubs to attract patrons, further squeezing an already pressured sector.
He wrote: "At my pub, the Farmer’s Dog, things aren’t quite so bleak but they’re still pretty terrible.
"The rateable value would shoot up from £27,250 to £55,000 and when you factor in the national insurance rise, which has upped our wage bill by £42,000 a year, we’d be up a gum tree.
"Because how can you pass this on to customers when they have a £2 billion gas bill to pay and they can’t get there anyway because of the new drink driving rules."
Jeremy Clarkson
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He continued: "Just last week, Jonathan Neame, the boss of Shepherd Neame — Britain’s oldest brewery — said there’s a real risk that the Labourites were doing to the pub trade what Margaret Thatcher did to the miners.
"He describes their 'dysfunctional' thinking as 'socially, morally and economically wrong.'"
The financial figures laid out by Mr Clarkson reveal the scale of the challenge facing his establishment.
He added: "A lot of people think the problem is that neither Starmer nor any of his frontbench comrades have any experience of running a business so it’s not something they can comprehend.
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"But actually the problem is bigger than that. It’s not that they don’t understand business, they actively hate it.
"You may only have a small pub in a Northamptonshire village but to them, you are the b****** love child of Sir Michael Edwardes and Elon Musk.
"You own a business so that makes you a billionaire, and you employ people, which means you’re no different to an 18th-century plantation owner in Jamaica."
"You may only have a small pub in a Northamptonshire village but to them, you are the b****** love child of Sir Michael Edwardes and Elon Musk.
"You own a business so that makes you a billionaire, and you employ people, which means you’re no different to an 18th-century plantation owner in Jamaica."
He went on: "When I rang the manager of my pub to get accurate national insurance figures, he was at the local laundromat, washing staff uniforms because he’d been unable to defrost the pub’s washing machines that morning.
Jeremy Clarkson
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"That’s the reality of running a business, but in Starmer’s adenoidal head, he spends his day dining on swan and uses the younger bar staff as foot stools. And me?
"The man who actually owns the pub? I’m Sir Ian MacGregor. I’m Nicholas van Hoogstraten. So of course I must be taxed until I’m ruined and on fentanyl."
The brewery boss's intervention adds significant weight to growing criticism from within the hospitality sector, with industry figures increasingly vocal about what they perceive as an existential threat to traditional British pubs under the current administration's fiscal policies.
Mr Clarkson reserved his harshest criticism for what he perceives as the government's fundamental hostility towards enterprise.