The biggest impact of global big beer in the UK in the last period has been from Diageo. They are of course a global drinks business well beyond beer, owning Johnnie Walker whisky and according to their most recent results in January 2025 promoting higher end, higher profit products, such as tequila in some markets. They also own Guinness and the media has been full of stories that there is a shortage of it in the UK. Why does not seem to have been satisfactorily explained but it is at least partly related to a surge in the popularity of the drink possibly extending to other stouts and porters as well. One interesting impact which reflects how global beer and independent brewers interact in the market has been to boost the sales of London Black, like Guinness a nitro beer, which is produced by the South London craft brewer Anspach and Hobday. However it boosted even more sales of Murphy’s Stout, now owned by Heineken.
Guinness is a very fashionable beer in nitro-keg format. You can even find a Tik Tok clip of Nigel Farage splitting the G (not recommended viewing). But it represents amongst the biggest of big beer impacts on bar tops.
What should socialists and socially responsible drinkers do? What can we do?
The above is a slightly edited extract from a longer piece on the Culture Matters site. A second piece will address the issue of what is to be done
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