Is there a deliberate campaign to destroy the British pub, writes Tom Swarbrick

There is simply nowhere else in British life quite like it. A pub doesn’t care who you are, what you’re wearing or how much you earn. It is the great egalitarian space where world-changing ideas have been born, where people have sat in quiet contemplation, or where things have got a bit punchier.

It’s where memories are made and, quite often, forgotten the next morning.

But affection alone doesn’t keep a business alive. And no business has a divine right to survive - unless, apparently, you’re a very large bank. And over the past few years, pubs have been up against it from all sides.

They’ve put up with lockdowns, energy shocks, staffing crises and the rise of supermarket booze. They’ve kept going because they believe in what they do.

Yet what’s happening now feels different.

Following the Budget’s revaluation of business rates, the British Institute of Innkeepers warns that fewer than one in ten pubs will be profitable next year. Fewer than one in ten. That is a staggering figure for an industry already hanging on by its fingertips.

And it doesn’t end there. Nine in ten pub operators say that, because of business rate rises, national insurance costs and the increase in the minimum wage, they’ll have to put up the price of drinks. Eighty per cent will cut staff hours. Nearly half will have to close their doors for longer during the week simply because they can’t afford to open them.

Is this what you want? Because it’s not what I want.

No business has the automatic right to exist, but it’s beginning to feel as though there is something more deliberate going on - as if the combined effect of these policies is pushing the British pub towards extinction. If you were trying to destroy the pub, you’d struggle to come up with a more effective plan than the one we’re living under.

And when a pub goes, it’s not just a lost business. It’s the loss of a community hub, a social space that has defined British life for centuries. The disappearance of somewhere anyone - absolutely anyone - can walk into and feel part of something bigger than themselves. And, of course, it affects the countryside more than big cities.

So we’re left with the question that should trouble all of us: after everything, is it now last orders?

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