Not content with trying to stop people from smoking outside pubs, the government and its comrades in “public health” want people to drink less inside them. 

According to the Telegraph, Rachel Reeves wants to raise alcohol duty, despite the fact that the UK has some of the highest taxes in the world. Fifty pubs a month closed in the first half of 2024, and the message from the government appears to be that it’s not nearly enough.

The problem for the government, perhaps, is that duty receipts fell by £1.3 billion last year. The Wine and Spirit Trade Association blames this, plausibly enough, on people buying less booze because of higher taxes. Can you see the problem with raising taxes in response?

Elsewhere, researchers from the Behaviour and Health Research Unit at the University of Cambridge are recommending that pints of beer be cut by a third. This follows an experiment in which pubs serving smaller portion sizes “led to nearly 10% less beer being sold and consumed”.

The Guardian’s report is an accidentally fascinating document. “The researchers invited more than 1,700 pubs, bars and restaurants to join the trial,” we are told:

The response was overwhelmingly unenthusiastic: despite compensation for lost takings, only 13 agreed.

You’re telling me that publicans were unenthusiastic about taking part in an experiment intended to find ways to make people consume less of their products? Astonishing! And will they be compensated for lost takings if the researchers’ proposals are successful? No, their pubs might simply close.

“Beyond the loss in takings,” the Guardian’s science editor Ian Sample writes, “There is an inertia to overcome. The British pint, introduced in 1698, is a cultural foundation.” It is fascinating how prescriptive language sneaks into science writing. When he says “inertia” he is at least partly referring to preferences. People are familiar with pints and have grown to like them. Why must this be “overcome”?

Whether it is any of the government’s damn business how much people drink is a valid question in itself — as is whether the state should be employing such manipulative “nudges” against citizens. But the researchers’ reasoning also seems bizarre. I’m sure we can all agree that alcoholism is an individual and collective tragedy. But was it people who drank the most who were happy not to buy another round despite their smaller portion sizes or people who drank the least? I suspect it was the latter. 

I also suspect that making it less satisfying and more expensive to drink in pubs will drive people to supermarkets, where millions of drinkers have migrated already. This tends to be the more asocial option and does nothing for local businesses.

The Guardian’s Elle Hunt is here to talk up the proposals, though. “Ever since I moved to the UK in 2017,” Ms Hunt informs us, “I’ve felt that the British pint is simply too big to comfortably enjoy.” This is fair enough. That’s her preference. But it’s typical of Guardianistanism that “I don’t enjoy this” can be extended to “no one should be able to enjoy this”. My suspicion is that if a Guardian contributor happens not to like mushrooms or folk music, they will look for an excuse to prohibit them.

The puritanical trajectory of British public life blazes through Hunt’s piece. “You could argue,” she writes:

… given the increasingly damning research, that reducing the standard measure by a third isn’t going far enough: we should be abstaining from alcohol entirely. I don’t foresee Britain ever becoming teetotal – but that doesn’t mean there aren’t changes that could be made, to reduce the harms of alcohol without encroaching on the pleasures. 

You could argue that. But being able to do something does not mean that one should. This cowardly phrase allows opinion columnists to put ideas forward without having to commit to them.

As for “without encroaching on the pleasures” — drinking in pubs in the UK has been made so expensive that I feel like I’m going to have to sell off one of my kidneys just to afford a second round (granted, a bad idea if you’re drinking alcohol). Pleasures are already being encroached upon. The “encroaching” has just escalated.

It is quite astonishing that as Britain becomes poorer, less safe and more divided, experts and politicians are doing their best to think of ways to curb people’s pleasures and consolations. It’s enough to drive you to drink — if you can afford it.