Britain’s pubs are dying on their feet. One by one, they’re closing, boarded up, another “to let” sign slapped on the door, another community hub gone for good.
And while Labour shrugs its shoulders and reaches for the tax lever yet again, Nigel Farage and Reform UK have done something that is now genuinely rare in politics: they’ve actually listened.
Today, Reform unveiled a £3billion rescue package for hospitality and pubs. Let’s be clear, this is not tinkering around the edges, and it’s not another Treasury sticking plaster. This is bold, it is practical, and exactly what the pub sector has been crying out for.
Start with VAT. Reform would cut VAT in hospitality to 10 per cent. That puts Britain back in line with many European countries that actually understand how hospitality works. France does it. Spain does it. Italy does it.
And shock horror, their hospitality and tourism sectors thrive. Labour, by contrast, seems determined to punish people for daring to go out, have a meal, or enjoy a pint.
Then there’s beer duty, cut by 10 per cent. Not a gimmick or a slogan, but a real cut that feeds straight through to the price of a pint.
Down the line, all these policies could mean a pound off the cost of a pint. A pound. That is a headline you will never see from Labour or Rachel Reeves, because her instinct is always the same: tax more, squeeze us harder, and hope that nobody notices until it’s too late.
Reform just humiliated Rachel Reeves to the tune of £3billion. Labour's tragedy is our triumph - Adam Brooks
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Reform would also phase out business rates over four years, one of the most punishing and outdated taxes ever inflicted on pubs.
Pubs pay eye-watering sums just for existing, while online giants and multinationals glide past the taxman with ease. It’s madness, and Reform UK is finally prepared to end it.
Add to that the reversal of Rachel Reeves’ National Insurance hike, another hammer blow to employers who are already on their knees. Hospitality doesn’t need lectures from the Treasury; it needs some breathing space.
Reeves’ first two budgets have already helped wipe out around 150,000 hospitality jobs and added around £30k to my yearly costs.
How many more pubs and jobs will disappear before Labour admits that this isn’t working?
Then there’s the issue nobody else dares touch, the broken and tied model between publicans and pub-owning landlords.
Many of these landlords are multi-billion-pound global companies, while the licensee is left taking all the risk and left with very little reward. Reform UK has said that they will review that relationship, and that alone shows they actually understand how the industry works on the ground.
Yes, this£3 billion package would be paid for by reversing Labour’s decision to lift the two-child cap and the benefit cap. Labour made a political choice, but Reform is making an economic one, to protect real jobs, real businesses, and real communities.
Because pubs are not just places that sell alcohol. They are places where British culture and British heritage. Where strangers become friends.
Where someone can sit at the bar and talk through their problems with a barmaid or barman who actually listens. For many elderly people, the pub is a second front room and sometimes the only place they see another human being all day. For builders and tradesmen, it’s that hour of relief between a hard day’s graft and going home to family life.
Labour simply does not understand this. To them, pubs are nothing more than tax collection points for the Treasury. Squeeze them hard enough, and they might cough up more revenue, until they don’t exist at all.
That model has no future. It will only destroy hundreds of thousands more jobs.
For me, this announcement has given us hope. It is exactly what the pub sector needed. The tragedy is that we may have to wait three, maybe three and a half years for Reform to get into government. I hope we don’t. I hope this Government collapses and we get a general election within the next 18 months.
Because Nigel Farage and Reform UK have shown something important today… That they listen, that they get it, that they care about British culture and the great British pub. And they may just have saved it.
Take a bow, Farage.
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