Sally-Ann Hart: Defending pubs is common sense conservatism

Sally-Ann Hart is the former MP for Hastings and Rye and a former Rother district councillor. 

Britain’s pubs are under attack. This attack is not coming from changing tastes or some shift in culture, but from government – a very worrying trend. Britain’s pubs are not just places to drink. They are economic anchors, social hubs and, in many communities – especially traditional working or rural ones – the last remaining shared civic space.

Pubs are independent, not state run. They are places where people meet freely, talk current affairs and politics, argue, organise and build social bonds without funding by or permission of the state. This sits uneasily with this Labour government’s mindset that prefers high tax, central control and regulation. It clearly does not like independence, tradition or self-reliant communities.

This is why Kemi Badenoch is right to sound the alarm and put pubs’ survival at the heart of a Conservative renewal agenda.

Her blueprint to save Britain’s pubs recognises what Labour either does not understand or does not care about – that pubs are not a lifestyle choice for the middle classes but the backbone of local economies and community life. Kemi recognises that when government piles cost onto hospitality, it is not big corporations that suffer first but local landlords, village communities and town centres already under pressure.

In coastal and rural constituencies like Hastings & Rye, where nearly 30 per cent of the economy depends on tourism and hospitality, pubs are the employers, meeting places, charity hubs and part of what attracts visitors to our coast, towns and villages. When pubs close, jobs are lost, footfall falls and the social glue that holds these communities together breaks down. Communities become hollowed out.

Since Labour won the 2024 election, pubs in Hastings & Rye have continued to disappear. Costs have risen, tax reliefs have been rescinded, energy prices are punitive, and National Insurance hikes and wage increases are being imposed with barely a thought for the margins hospitality operates on.

Labour sees pubs as revenue streams to be squeezed and behaviours to be nudged out of existence, not as assets to protect. Their instinct is always the same … tax more, regulate harder, and then express surprise when businesses fold.

The contrast with the Conservative approach could not be clearer.

During Covid and its aftermath, Conservatives stepped in pragmatically and decisively, to protect this sector. Business rates relief, VAT cuts, furlough support and targeted grants were not ideological gestures but lifelines keeping thousands of pubs and families alive.

Along with many of my former colleagues, I campaigned hard for my local tourism and hospitality businesses, for tax cuts and business rates reliefs to keep pubs open and people in work. As MP, I believed that my job was to fight for the businesses that sustain my community. That fight has clearly ended with the change of government, with the current stock of Labour MPs failing to champion an industry (or any private sector industry for that matter) on which so much of our local economies depend.

Kemi Badenoch’s blueprint is important because it starts from the Conservative principles that you cannot grow an economy by punishing the very people who create jobs and social value. You cannot claim to care about “community” while destroying the places where community happens. Conservatives understand that you cannot tax, regulate and wage-hike your way to thriving communities. Growth comes from backing enterprise, reducing burdens, and trusting people to run their businesses.

This is about more than pubs and if Labour continues on its current course, Britain will lose far more than pubs. This is about whether Britain remains a country where communities come together, of human connection and the easing of loneliness and where local economies quietly tick over, or a country where government increasingly regulates, taxes and lectures everyday life out of existence.

Labour’s approach will leave us poorer, lonelier and more divided. I am pleased that Kemi is fighting for our pubs. It is Common Sense Conservatism.