Near Tower Bridge yesterday, Kemi Badenoch gathered her shadow cabinet for a team away day. Battling through a cold – one she was struggling with at this week’s PMQs – she was, by all accounts, “very upbeat”. No wonder after a run of encouraging polling, both personal and for the party – and all topped off by the revelation that yet another Labour U-turn (the 12th) is coming down the track.
This one is expected to come in the form of pubs’ exorbitant business rate hikes that would have seen bills soar by an average of 78 per cent over the next three years, to the tune of nearly £13,000. That is alongside minimum wage going up, alcohol duty up and employers’ national insurance up.
In amidst the ‘away day’ break outs that addressed the challenges the party is facing, discussing policy, communication, strategy, targeting and whole party engagement (yes, at least one person sent me a gif of The Thick of It ‘Thought Camp’ away day episode), and detailed presentations from CCHQ chief Mark McInnes and LOTO advisor Stephen Gilbert about messaging, campaigning and strategy, it did allow for a moment of celebration. A happy Labour U-turn day – as Badenoch later took to X: “It seems to come earlier and earlier every week.”
I’m told the Tory leader took time to congratulate her team for helping to secure yet another U-turn in their campaign to defend pubs, hot on the heels of their successful fight against the family farm tax. As one shadow cabinet minister tells me: “There was a really positive atmosphere.” With another adding that “the mood was very good”.
Badenoch joked that Labour MPs had gone home at Christmas only to find out they had been banned from their local pub, got angry and then started pushing for the U-turn. Reform, meanwhile, had only jumped on the bandwagon after the plight of pubs became such a big political issue.
But the Tories had announced their business rates policy of scrapping rates for retail, hospitality and leisure under £110,000 back at October’s party conference – and Badenoch mentioned that she had been along to visit Wetherspoons’ Tim Martin with shadow chancellor Mel Stride in November where she said: “Labour needs to stop taxing. They’ve floated everything. Taxing property, pensions, taxing savings, income tax thresholds. All they think of is tax, tax, tax.”
This is where Labour could really learn a lesson in getting out of the way and not taxing until breaking point at every opportunity, because the impact is stark. According to UK Hospitality, an industry lobby group, 89,000 jobs were lost in the sector after the chancellor’s maiden budget in 2024.
What the Government’s sluggish response has shown, Badenoch argued, is their lack of understanding of rural communities. In her patch in rural Essex, some places have lost their bakery and butchers, often leaving just a church and pub at the centre of the community.
She is right on that count. Pubs are businesses, but they are also vital community assets – part of a healthy social fabric, civic life. Village hubs, social spaces, providers of jobs, a place to just sit and have a local beer, with a mate or just to wind down. They should be helped rather than hindered.
But it doesn’t just come down to rural communities. Labour’s series of U-turns shows a lack of understanding of wider British life and culture.
It now leaves open questions of why the U-turn doesn’t go further. Why not extend it to the rest of hospitality, with restaurants, hotels, cafes and music venues? Places that have survived recessions, lockdowns, but are struggling to deal with the blows inflicted by Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves.
As Stride has already said: “The problem is far bigger than pubs. Businesses right across Britain are at breaking point because of Rachel Reeves’ choices. Reeves must now go further and give the rest of the retail, hospitality and leisure sector the support they need.”
The point was echoed by the shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith, who warned that the country needs more than “a few sticking plasters” if it is to “stem the flow of blood from Rachel Reeves’ bad choices”.
Fundamentally it shows, once more, a government that doesn’t know what it is doing, or what it even believes in doing. It acts before it thinks and suffers the consequences, except it is the public and private business who really pay the price for their thoughtlessness.