Kmflett's Blog

Perpetual calls to restrict or shut pubs reflect the divorce between the Tories & their traditional base

A hundred years ago the Tories were the party of the Beerage. That is the brewers and come to that whisky distillers and others drinks producers.

As the proposals for the Small Brewers Duty Relief underline the Tories still do have links to regional brewers. But these are not central in the greater scheme of things.

In reality the big brewing and pub concerns in the UK are very largely owned by global companies- ABInBev, Heineken, Carlsberg etc etc. They owe no particular allegiance to the Tories and vice versa.

It reflects a small part of what the historian David Edgerton has written about in terms of the divorce of the current Tory Party from its traditional UK business interests.

You may be one of those (as I am) who wondered what exact evidence there is that closing pubs at 10pm has any impact on the far too high rates of COVID-19 infection. It does impact on the income and jobs of many casual and precarious workers but the Government cant save every job and particularly not any of those…

There was of course no evidence and the long heralded plans to shut pubs again in swathes of the UK falls into the same category. There is indeed much evidence of concerningly high infection rates amongst University students. The UCU has rightly called for a halt to face to face teaching. Perhaps something will be done…

Aside from the broken link between brewers and the Tories what else accounts for the ‘something must be done, lets shut pubs’ policy?

The answer, not much discussed, are temperance campaigners who have strong influence in public health bodies across the four nations.

I’m sometimes criticised for writing that this is understandable. Alcohol problems are only one health issue but they are an issue and medical people have to deal with them.

There are some however who have crossed the line between a fully reasonable concern with excessive drinking amongst a minority and a campaigning desire that any step that stops people from drinking is worth a go.

To be clear they don’t care or at least don’t appear to care about the impact on jobs or the mental health impact of restricting social interactions(or if they do they never say so). They just want to stop drinking. Full stop.

Measured discussion in these times is not easy. I do think however that it is not a binary choice between more lockdown measures or just letting infections rise.

The disgracefully low rate of Universal Credit could be increased to living wage levels so that where restrictions are needed people who lose their jobs can pay the bills.

Anyone who thinks pubs might need to close and also includes in their thought that measure will get my qualified support.

Needless to say Nicola Sturgeon’s evidence light diktat to shut or curtail pubs in Scotland didn’t get anywhere near that. The Chief Operating Officer of Brewdog tweeted that the support package (obviously not worked out beforehand or anything tedious like that) of £40m amounted to £2,000 a business.

Meanwhile Han-cock the English Health Minister has claimed that as pubs are the key source of COVID-19 infection- as ever with his statements evidence free- they would have to shut in hotspots (as vicariously determined).

If this did limit the spread of COVID-19 infections it would be prudent to do it of course, with proper support. Unfortunately I suspect in a few weeks it will be found that it hasn’t.

I shall watch with interest what increasingly looks like a temperance campaign that wont speak its name. Not so far anyway.