Patrick Christys: Ladies and Gentlemen, we are gathered here today to mourn the sad loss of the British hospitality sector

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are gathered here today to mourn the sad loss of the British hospitality sector.

It had a good life. There were pints pulled, meals cooked, laughter reverberated inside its walls, friends were made, romances blossomed…occasionally headbutts happened outside.

But after a long battle against a terminal illness, unfortunately, the hospitality sector has passed away.

May it rest in peace.

The fact is - we have been put into a lockdown by stealth and it has sounded the death knell for thousands of pubs and restaurants, and probably many hotels as well.

Millions of Britain have cancelled their Christmas plans after Chris Whitty stood before us and issued yet another slideshow of doom.

The man whose predictions make Michael Fish look like the oracle has promised us that he’s absolutely 100% right this time, that Omicron may well not be less harmful than Delta and that, according to his projections, we’ll probably all have had Covid within a few weeks.

It’s all very well and good Whitty and Co saying that they’re not closing down the pubs and restaurants, but they have.

Because when you’re confronted with information like that, people stay away. Now, fair enough, it is what it is. But the fact is that this is going to push people over the edge.

UK restaurants and pubs fear a 40% cut in Christmas takings.It’s thought that, over the Christmas period alone, £8bn will be lost by the hospitality sector.

We all know, that’s unsustainable. Monday to Sunday of last week showed a 13% drop in trade and a 15% increase in cancellations - that was last week, goodness only knows what it’s going to be like this week.

Never before has the song empty chairs at empty tables seemed so appropriate.

Scotland’s hospitality sector alone has reportedly already lost £1bn due to Christmas cancellations.

It’s a double whammy for them isn’t it - vaccine passports will, by definition, reduce custom but obviously now the cover case numbers and Chris Whitty’s slideshows of doom are putting people off leaving the house.

Bear in mind that we were already losing 40 pubs a week. When restrictions first hit home in March last year, there were 47,927 pubs and bars across Britain.

By September this year, that had dwindled to just 44,680.

A total 3,247 closures took place in the 18 months of the pandemic.

The West End has been obliterated - the arts and culture hub of England has been decimated.

The Lion King called off shows on Tuesday and Wednesday due "to Covid-enforced absences" among cast and crew.

Life of Pi at Wyndham's Theatre pulled five shows from 9 to 13 December.The Royal Shakespeare Company's Comedy of Errors at the Barbican in London has also cancelled all performances until 22 December due to Covid cases.And it’s hit the stock market.

Premier Inn’s owner, Whitbread, and InterContinental Hotels Group were among the biggest fallers on the FTSE 100, losing 3.5% and 3.3% respectively.

On the FTSE 250, JD Wetherspoon shed 5.4%, while the Wagamama owner, Restaurant Group, declined by 3.9%.

Industry insiders are pleading with Rishi Sunak to bail them out, and he’s going to have to. Which means we’re going to have to. Because it’s our money at the end of the day.

Look, I’d really hoped that we’d learned some lessons from the last pandemic, I really hoped that Whitty and Co might have changed their tune.

But they haven’t. Here we go again - Covid is the priority over EVERYTHING else.

I'm not diminishing the fact that people will get ill from Omicron, people may well die, and please don't think I'm downplaying that.

They are of the view that Omicron now is worse than the collective damage caused by killing off the hospitality sector, damaging children’s education and mental health, turning the NHS into the National Covid Service, potentially harming the travel industry and stifling the economy in a way that will mean our grandchildren will end up paying for it.

It’s blinkered, it’s very, very blinkered. And I’d be more willing to accept it, if the man dishing out the predictions, had got any of them right before.