To a landlord in a draughty Victorian boozer staring at his latest business rates bill, it will read more like a ransom note from the mafia than a letter from HMRC. In 2026, under Keir Starmer’s ‘growth-first’ regime, this chap’s rates have rocketed.
While Starmer is strutting the stage at Davos or waxing lyrical or at some CBI luncheon about ‘unleashing Britain’s potential’ and ‘building a brighter future’, delivering drivel so vacuous that it would make even Tony Blair blush, his government is unleashing policies that are throttling the engines of economic growth.
The changes to business rates are exhibit A, a perfect storm of outdated valuations, inflationary hikes and half-hearted reform. Britain was promised a ‘fundamental review’ and got superficial tinkering: new rateable values kicking in from April 2026, leading to an average 76 per cent climb for pubs over three years and an extra £12,900 per establishment, according to UKHospitality. More than 5,000 pubs have seen their valuations double. Transitional relief is capped at the higher rate of £800, or a percentage that barely scratches the surface.
For the uninitiated – or those mercifully distant from the coalface – business rates are a tax on property value. They’re calculated by the Valuation Office Agency with all the precision of a blindfolded darts player. Pubs, already hammered by post-Covid slumps and energy crises, now face bills based on pre-pandemic ‘rateable values’ that bear no relation to reality. In Bristol or Birmingham, a modest local might cough up £50,000 a year. This is more than its takings on a good month.
While the January U-turn promises some relief – a partial concession to avert a full pub landlord revolt – in classic Starmer fashion it’s handled so clumsily that it exacerbates uncertainty rather than resolving it. Meanwhile, big chains have lobbied for loopholes. A government obsessed with ‘levelling up’ is levelling down the high street instead.
In my previous Spectator pieces on the great pub cull, I’ve seen it firsthand. Landlords in Yorkshire or Kent, once proud stewards, now flogging off fixtures on eBay to pay the taxman. One told me, with bitter irony, ‘Starmer wants growth? He could try growing a spine and perhaps spending a whole week in England instead of worrying about Greenland. He might worry about something he could actually fix, but then he would have to make a decision – something clearly beyond him.’
The government is talking of turbocharged growth while slamming on the brakes
Another, from a Devon village pub hit with a staggering 2,000 per cent valuation surge, as reported in the Express, lamented: ‘We’re being hammered into financial ruin – how are we supposed to survive this?’ Across the sector, landlords are warning of dire consequences. The British Beer and Pub Association has said that six venues could close daily from April.
The government is talking of turbocharged growth while slamming on the brakes. It’s self-sabotaging and daft. Of course they’ll blame Brexit, or the Tories or the weather gods. But the truth stares them in the face: a rates system unchanged since the 1990s, creaking under modern pressures. Reform it properly – digitise valuations, cap hikes, exempt small firms. Watch growth sprout like hops in spring.
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