Labour's latest hellish move will rip out the heart of us publicans hanging on by our fingertips - Adam Brooks

We’ve been hanging on by our fingernails since the pandemic. Remember that? The government is shutting us down overnight. Curfews. Table service madness. £10,000 fines for playing music too loud.

I ran two pubs through that madness. I lived it. I breathed it. I watched so many industry mates go under and watched good staff walk away from an industry they loved, because they couldn’t survive the chaos.

And now, after years of fighting through Covid, inflation, and energy bills that had tripled at times, we got this, the Labour budget from hell.

Labour’s first big move, and what did they do? They hammered the very people trying to keep community businesses alive.

They slashed rate relief, offered no meaningful energy support, and no business rates reform.

And worst of all, the politicians and the public still don’t grasp how deep this crisis runs.

You kill the pub, you kill the local economy. End of story.

Wages have gone up, and rightly so, but where’s the help for small employers trying to pay those wages? The money has to come from somewhere!

There’s no National Insurance reduction, no employer breaks at all, and let’s be honest, energy prices are still sky high. My bills are up over 100 per cent since 2019, and some months it's even more.

And what choice are we left with? We either raise prices again and risk pricing out the very people we exist to serve, or we cut staff and run on fumes.

Many of us are already doing both.

Good workers, people who’ve been with us for years, are being let go because we can’t afford to keep them. That’s the direct result of a budget made in a bubble, by out-of-touch people who’ve never run a business in their entire lives.

This Government’s answer? Shrug.

Move on. Let the market sort it out.

Well, the market has decided. And it has decided that small, independent pubs are not worth saving in many towns and cities.

A third of us, that’s tens of thousands of pubs, are now on the brink of closure.

That’s not spin, that’s not drama, that’s reality.

People are handing in the keys, wiping down the bar one last time, and walking away from something they’ve literally built up with their bare hands.

And what do we hear from Labour?

“We support small business.”

Absolute rubbish, a complete lie.

If they did, their budget wouldn’t look like this; it wouldn’t treat pubs and hospitality as an afterthought, while throwing money at pet projects and PR spin.

This isn’t just about economics, it’s about British culture and our heritage.

It’s about national identity, it is about the beating heart of British life being ripped out by insane policy failure and political indifference.

We’re not asking for handouts, we’re asking for recognition and for targeted support and the chance to survive the next year or two, without being drowned by tax hikes, inflated wage bills and energy bills.

We’re asking for business rates reform that works for the little guy. For a break, just one, after years of being kicked in the teeth by successive governments.

But all we get are warm words and cold shoulders.

So here’s my message to Labour, loud and clear.

If you let a third of our pubs go to the wall on your watch, you won’t just lose a few votes, you’ll lose all trust, lose communities, and you’ll lose a part of Britain that we’ll never get back.

Wake up, or watch the last round get pulled in the great British pub.