Kmflett's Blog

As Soon As This Pub Closes: Farage’s plan to ‘save’ pubs

Nigel Farage held one of his very regular press conferences on Tuesday, in a bar. He was putting forward Reform’s plans to save British pubs.

Numbers are closing, and have been for some years. It’s also the case that new pubs open, Wetherspoons is quite busy on this at the moment, but like all the best profit and loss accounts the two are never quite tied up.

Farage’s plan had a few key points.

Business rates on pubs will be scrapped gradually over a five year Parliament. This will be paid for by reintroducing the two child benefit cap. Whether the figures actually add up who knows but it doesn’t matter because Farage is unlikely to be PM in the near future. As often with Reform a bit more thought suggests issues. Restoring the benefit cap will take money away from a considerable number, money that might on occasion have paid for an occasional pub visit. There is also a wider historical issue which sits oddly. Temperance had it that drunkards were feckless who also therefore had lots of children which they couldn’t afford. Hmmm. More importantly the politics of leaving children to go hungry is not popular and certainly not populist politics

The VAT rate for pubs will be cut to bring it more into line with supermarkets (that don’t pay VAT on food). A good idea although one wonders if the supermarkets think so. Governments which are usually keen to ‘bash’ pubs financially are much less keen to take on the huge profits of the big supermarkets.

Where tenanted pubs can buy beer etc from will be liberalised so that they don’t have to pay the often sky high rates pub companies charge them but can get supplies cheaper on the open market. What the pub companies such as Marstons, M&B, Fullers, Youngs etc will think about this is how shall we say uncertain

Lastly Farage says Reform will cut 5p off the price of a pint. So what? With many pints these days costing more than a fiver that amounts to less than a 1% cut.

It was I suppose surprising that Farage didn’t say his plan to save pubs was to visit as many of the 794 Wetherspoons currently open before Easter.

It might also be argued that this was one of Reform’s less wild pressers. Reality was engaged with just a little bit and as above reality was found to be quite difficult to grapple with.

In my view pubs, and they do need saving, are best saved not from above but by communities, those that use them and drink in them, from below. Absolutely nothing from Farage on that of course, the ‘people’s party’ in name only.