One of the silver linings of the great cloud that is attending the Labour conference in Sir Keir’s perma-January Britain, is it allows a chunk of time in Liverpool. Many cities might claim to have the best set of pubs – and I’m as much a sucker for Oxford’s Rose and Crown, Stratford’s Dirty Duck, the Victoria in Durham or York’s glorious, colourful brace of the Blue Bell and Black Swan as any pub goer. However Liverpool boasts a thriving pub culture like no other.
From live music at The Grapes to the splendid isolation of The Baltic Fleet, still standing firm on the dock. From the must-sees: the famed sloping floor of The Globe and the Beatles’ haunt of Ye Cracke, to the hidden gems of The Denbigh Castle and The Belvedere. Or my favourite: the joyously crowded Peter Kavanagh’s, where ornate ashtrays are built into the tables waiting, like Drake’s Drum, for the moment when they might be called into noble use again.
London, a city that post-10pm becomes a bastion of Cromwellian dourness, could certainly learn a thing or two from the Liverpudlian nightlife.
Yet even here there is a melancholy sense to the average pub that has lingered since Covid. A pincer movement of cultural changes – the death of lunchtime drinking, the rise of clean living – now coupled with a government of an obvious puritanical bent, has created a perfect storm for pub owners.
Courtesy of the Government and their like-minded pals in public health we have heard pitches for two-thirds-sized pints and shorter pub opening hours – all within the last week. Rachel Reeves is reportedly considering an alcohol duty hike to plug the famed £22 billion “black hole”. Before that proposed smoking bans in beer gardens prompted ire from landlords.
Imposing shorter hours to curb “problem drinking” strikes me as a particularly mean suggestion; some of us do our most civilised, least “problematic” drinking in pubs. It’s as if they know that the one thing that might help the British public through the next five years of much-vaunted misery is going for a drink and hoping it all blows over, so they are therefore determined to take even that small consolation away.
After public health minister Andrew Gwynne spoke of “tightening up on some of the hours of operation”, Prof Sir Ian Gilmore of the Alcohol Health Alliance welcomed this intervention but, inevitably, didn’t think it went far enough. “It is scandalous that a bottle of vodka can still be bought at 2am in a petrol station,” he fumed.
You heard that right. What is scandalous about this country is not the collapse of trust in public institutions, nor the rampant crime and violence on our streets. No, according to this man, whose very DNA is presumably woven from natural hemp fibres and misery, the real scandal facing Britain in 2024 is the idea that some students might be able to keep a party going at home with a bottle of vastly overpriced Smirnoff. Such people will not rest until all joy has been removed from life.
Consider the hard and often thankless work already involved in running a pub nowadays: soaring alcohol duties, inflation, long hours and relentless pressure. Vanishingly few on the current frontbench have ever run a business or employed someone. Yet they arrogantly assume the right to make life ever-more difficult for publicans.
Sadly, it looks like they and their ilk are succeeding. Pubs are closing at an alarming rate: 600 go a year. Following this trend, the last one is due to vanish, with Orwellian irony, in 2084. Still, it’s nice to have a target date to be dead by.
On one level this is nothing new. There have always been people who hate the pub. We essentially fought a civil war on the subject. Our first national epic, Beowulf, features a conflict between lovers of mead and song and a grey and grim monster who resents fun. Grendel is described by the poet as “dreamum bedaeled” – “cut off from joy”. Who does that remind you of?
Indeed, Sir Keir and his acolytes seem unable to grasp why anyone would frequent a pub at all, ignoring their important social purpose. People come there to gossip and to moan, to make jokes and let loose, for conviviality and companionship. None of those are things the Starmers and the Gwynnes of this world can understand.
Ironically, there is nothing politicians love more than a photo shoot behind the beer taps – alongside meeting children and donning a high-vis jacket on a building site, “pulling pints” is probably their favourite photo op of all. Given how unreasonable the past few years have been, some pubs might consider barring all politicians who back laws putting their livelihoods at risk. Such a campaign might just make them realise how important and valued they are.
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