Labour MPs banned from Clarkson's pub

Jeremy Clarkson has banned Labour MPs from his pub. Not some of them. All of them. And some drones are following suit. A grand gesture, loudly performed, designed to show that pubs are being “taxed to oblivion” by Rachel Reeves and her wicked Budget. It makes for good headlines and a fine bit of culture-war theatre.

It also collapses the moment you ask one awkward question. Did he ban Conservative politicians?

Because if this were genuinely about accountability, the blacklist would start there.

Pubs have been closing for decades. Not since this Budget. Not since Labour took office. Decades. Britain had close to 70,000 pubs in the early 1980s. Today it has nearer 45,000. That decline happened under Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak. If Labour caused it, they have been astonishingly effective from opposition.

The reasons are dull, structural and deeply unfashionable, which is why they are being ignored. Supermarkets were allowed to sell alcohol cheaper than pubs could buy it. Drinking habits changed. Pub companies stripped tenants through rents and beer ties. The smoking ban accelerated losses. Property values made conversion more profitable than survival. Local authorities waved closures through.

Then came Brexit. Labour shortages, higher food costs, customs friction, weaker growth. Hospitality took a direct hit. Then Covid. Then energy prices. Then insurance. None of this arrived with Rachel Reeves’ Budget.

Yes, some business rates bills have risen. That is real. The removal of pandemic relief and revaluations have hurt some operators. That deserves fixing. But presenting this as the moment pubs were “taxed out of existence” requires a heroic act of historical amnesia.

And it requires ignoring who was actually in charge while the damage was being done.

Fourteen of the last fifteen years were Conservative. They presided over Brexit. They mismanaged Covid. They triggered the energy shock. They hollowed out local government. Pub closures ticked on quietly under their watch, year after year, without Clarkson banning anyone.

No signs barring Tory MPs. No outrage when Sunak withdrew support. No fury when Truss blew up the economy and sent costs soaring. Apparently that was all fine.

Which tells you this is not about pubs. It is about picking a side.

Clarkson is not auditing policy. He is performing identity politics from behind a bar. Labour happens to be in office, so Labour gets the blame. Forty years of decisions that favoured supermarkets, property developers and financial extraction over local social infrastructure are waved away.

If pubs are dying, it is not because Rachel Reeves hates beer. It is because Britain decided, repeatedly and over decades, that the pub was expendable. Cheap booze mattered more. Housing mattered more. Shareholder value mattered more. The local mattered last.

Slapping a “No Labour MPs” sign in the window does not change that. It just avoids asking why nobody kicked up this fuss when the real damage was being done, and why the politicians who oversaw it all are still perfectly welcome at the bar.