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Pub landlord warns of 'more and more' closures amid Labour tax raid
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Aug 18, 2025
Pub landlord Marc Bridgen has hit out at the Labour Government for "killing" the industry, as hundreds of boozers shut their doors in the first six months of this year.Speaking to GB News, Mr Bridgen declared he plans to "keep going for as long as possible", but running a pub has not been a "stable environment" for a long time.FULL STORY HERE.
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Now, we're going to talk about pubs
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Both of us, big fan of a pub. More than 200 have closed their doors for good
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in the first half of this year because of tax rises and labour costs
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Well, it now takes the total number of pubs vanishing from communities since 2020
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That's just in the past five years. You cannot believe this. Five years, nearly..
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Well, I was going to say nearly 3,000... 2,283, to be exact. 2,283
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Unbelievable. You know, I saw an episode of Clarkson's Farm recently and he was trying to buy a pub
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Yes, I know, and all those lovely pubs, they were all for sale
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In the Cotswolds. So sad. Really, really sad, but it says it all
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What does the future hold for them? Well, we're going to go to a pub called The Dog
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and The Dog is in Wingham, and we've got the landlord there, the owner, Mark Bridgen
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Mark, good morning to you. Good morning. Well, this is a sad situation
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Yeah, and it's been in the news for so long now, and it doesn't look like anything's changing
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It is so challenging to run a pub in these times. For a few years now, I think it really started with the utility crisis
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That really was the end for many, many pubs and many landlords
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we saw our energy go from 36,000 to 100, and we somehow survived that. Twinned with that
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with the inflation everything we buy which continues Recently we saw some of our beef products go up 25 There now the new taxes on packaging which is coming into effect and then that has a knock to your waist
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And, yeah, the really big challenge is, you know, labour costs. You know, that's our single largest bill, is our team
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It takes a lot of people to run a pub, restaurant, and in our case we've got rooms, hotel
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You know, we have a staff of around 25 people. So we're labour-intensive
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Mark, can you imagine... Mark, can you imagine meeting the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves
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and her looking you in the eye and telling you, I've done a great thing for the country by taxing these jobs
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I wouldn't know whether to laugh or to cry. Yeah, I would love to sit down with her and get some..
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Government is meant to deliver a safe, stable environment for us to live and work in
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And we do not have a stable environment within which to run our pubs and restaurants
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Why do they see pubs as such a cash cow? When you know how difficult it is to run, to maintain, to keep those buildings that you've got in order, to keep the staff together
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You have to sell food whether you want to or not because it's the only way you're going to make any sort of money
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but why is it that people in Whitehall, civil servants and whatever
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see you guys as the forever giving cash cow? Well, if that's how they feel, they've got it wrong
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They just don't understand and they are killing, you know, they are killing an industry that provides a huge amount of jobs and pays a huge amount in tax And also gives a community And also makes And Mark from my point of view loving a pub as I do
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and having lived in villages across the land, I would say it's the heart of a village
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It's a community. And it's a place where people meet and it just gives heart to places as well
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The heart and soul. Heart and soul of the place, yeah. And they're taking that away. Absolutely. And that's the bit you can't put a price on
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Absolutely. Yeah. No, we've lost our post offices. Yeah. And we're losing, you know, so many..
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Yeah, we've lost our banks, we've lost our post offices and the pub is going next
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Actually, the other thing, Mark, that I would say is that, from my point of view
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only last night I went to go and have a little half of Timothy Taylor's
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and I was just thinking, my goodness, the price of this half a pint is quite staggering
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when I could probably go to the supermarket and go and buy..
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Yeah, that's the danger. But I'm just saying that the problem is that as soon as they made it
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so that it was cheaper to go to the supermarket than it was to go to the pub, buy a huge margin rather than just a bit of a margin
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That also was difficult, wasn't it? Yeah, I completely agree. It has become so expensive to staff and to turn the lights on
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and to buy the beer and to then serve it that it's..
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And we're not making any profit. Yeah, that's the problem. And we've had to keep putting our prices up
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and it's not to our benefit. What's the future, Mark? It's taking 20%
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What is going to happen We just going to lose more and more pubs um you know our wonderful village of wingham used to have four pubs it has two now and i don know how long they will remain in business you know
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i know that our neighbors in the villages around us the pubs are either closing or they've lost
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another tenant and some one else is coming in to give it a go and i'm talking all sorts of
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different pubs from just, you know, you spit and sawdust, have a
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pint in the village pub through to, you know, in the next
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village along, a Michelin star pub. Have you thought about giving it up
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I am trying to go for as long as possible because we
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love it and we love our guests and we love our team, but it is so
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hard. It really is. Mark, sorry to hear about your troubles I'm sorry that politicians, all of them, of all colours, of all shades
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whether they're in government or not, are deaf to this. Absolutely deaf. And they'll only miss it when it's gone
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It's like the BBC, they complain about it all the time and they'll miss it when it's gone
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So thank you very much indeed. The pubs, the post offices and the banks
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What is left for village life. Mark, leave it there. Thank you very much indeed
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So listen, we want to ask you, what do you think? is your pub being affected
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As I said, I don't drink, but I love the atmosphere of a pub
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and I'll go in and sit with people who do drink. You're allowed to drink other drinks
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And a lot of people, for example, I'm sorry, but Guinness, zero Guinness is really, really good
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You can't, that's why you can barely tell it from the original. See, I do my homework properly
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You're sampling. I do. I know
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