Keir Starmer, pub harmer
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 9 January 2026
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Another year, another U-turn. We expect that the Labour government will be forced to climb down on forthcoming increases to the business rates bills faced by pubs in England. This comes after ferocious industry backlash, spearheaded by figures such as Tom Kerridge, who has been out in the media this week drawing attention to the more than 100 per cent increase in costs some of his establishments are facing. Some are pointing to the slow unravelling of Rachel Reeves’s Budget but – perhaps more damaging – is the optics of this: surely nothing mobilises deep England more than coming for our pubs. What impact will this have on Labour’s credibility? And what impact will it have on Rachel Reeves’s headroom?
Oscar Edmondson speaks to Michael Simmons and Tim Shipman.
Produced by Oscar Edmondson.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, The Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Oskarmington, and I'm joined today by Tim Schittman and Michael Simmons. |
| 0:13.0 | And a fitting topic, I think, for early on a Friday afternoon, we're going to be talking about pubs. |
| 0:17.8 | We expect a climb down from the government over the |
| 0:21.8 | forthcoming increases to business rates bills faced by pubs. This is all set to be announced, |
| 0:27.1 | Michael, but perhaps firstly, could you tell us why pubs are in such a mess at the moment? |
| 0:32.7 | Surely we should just reflect, Oscar, that we should all really have been doing this from |
| 0:36.4 | the Westminster Arms. |
| 0:40.3 | You've rather let the side down, to be honest. |
| 0:42.8 | It's a scandal that this is not an outside broadcast. I thought even for the spectator at 12pm was maybe a little bit early. |
| 0:46.7 | 12 p.m's late. |
| 0:48.6 | But look, these pubs were facing, in some cases, staggering increases to the business rates, the tax that, you know, |
| 0:57.2 | business premises pay. The average was about a 30% increase, but there was some particularly |
| 1:03.6 | troubled pubs that were going to face a doubling or trebling of those values. And that's for two |
| 1:10.7 | reasons. First of all, the way this is this tax |
| 1:13.8 | is calculated is based on something called your rateable value, which takes in things like the rent |
| 1:19.5 | on the property. And the last time that was assessed was during COVID. And I don't know if anyone |
| 1:25.8 | was sort of hunting for property around COVID. |
| 1:28.2 | Rents came down quite a lot because obviously there was nobody moving in the markets. |
| 1:32.4 | And now, obviously, rents have increased again. So that increase is bigger than it was if, say, |
| 1:37.0 | you compared to 2019, the last time that business rates were set. But then that's coming in |
| 1:42.9 | a double whammy period where also there was this |
| 1:45.9 | COVID-19 support that would give you rates relief. And that's being withdrawn at the same time, |
... |
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