Labour’s culture war on the country pub

Confession time: I like a pub. I like a country pub even more. And I absolutely adore a pint of ale, preferably a nutty, hoppy, real ale like Wadworth, or Hall and Woodhouse, or something from a local microbrewery – sipped in the snug of a thatched-roof inn, surrounded by the low hum of locals swapping tales of harvests and hunts (now, more likely house prices and the school run, and what we can do about this diabolical government). There’s something quintessentially English about it: the fire crackling, the dog at your feet, the sense that the world’s woes are kept at bay by a sturdy oak door. Tragically, if Labour’s latest road-safety proposals get the green light, that simple pleasure might soon be consigned to the history books for many, especially those of us who call the countryside home.

The UK government, under the guise of saving lives, has unveiled a raft of measures that feel less like prudent policy and more like a targeted assault on rural life. New drivers – both learners and those in their first two years behind the wheel – will face what is effectively a zero-tolerance alcohol ban, with the blood-alcohol limit slashed to a mere 20mg per 100ml. Not a single pint, not even a small glass of wine, could be consumed before driving. For the rest of us, the limit drops to 50mg per 100ml, aligning with Scotland and much of Europe.

And it’s not just about booze – the proposed package includes points for not wearing seatbelts, doubled fines for uninsured drivers, and compulsory eye tests every three years for over-70s. Oh, and for repeat drink-drive offenders, alcolocks – devices that breathalyse you before the engine starts – could become a condition for getting back on the road. The aim? A 65 per cent reduction in road deaths and serious injuries by 2035, with an even steeper 70 per cent drop for kids under-16.

On the surface, who could argue with safer roads? But dig a little deeper, and the question arises: is the government doing all this because there’s a great democratic clamour for it? Clearly not. Polls show public concern over drink-driving, sure, but no groundswell demanding we ape Europe’s puritanical limits. Road-safety charities like Brake welcome it, but where’s the voter uprising? This isn’t a response to mass petitions or doorstep demands – it’s top-down tinkering from a Labour administration that seems to view personal freedoms with contempt.

Why has the government done this? Could it be that Labour simply hates people who live in the countryside? It certainly feels that way. Rural folk have been in the crosshairs since Starmer took office. Inheritance-tax hikes on farmland, even in their recently watered-down form, threaten family estates passed down for generations. The trail hunting ban, framed as protecting animal welfare but reeking of class warfare, strips away a cornerstone of countryside culture. And while there’s no increased tax on tweed yet (give it time), the cumulative effect is a government treating rural Britain like a problem to be solved, not a community to be cherished. Public transport? Sparse. Taxis? Expensive and unreliable outside market towns. For many in the sticks, the car is a lifeline, not a luxury. A trip to the pub might be the only social outing in a week, and now even that is set to become a thing of the past.

Or perhaps Labour simply hates pubs themselves. Last year, the British Beer and Pub Association warned that, in 2025, at least one pub would close every single day, wiping out 5,600 jobs.

Costs for publicans are crippling: high taxes, rising business rates, increasing energy bills and ever more regulatory red tape mean that for every three quid spent over the bar, at least one goes straight to the Treasury. Pubs aren’t just boozers – they’re community hubs, wedding venues, quiz nights and lifelines against rural isolation, too. As Christopher Snowdon argued this week on spiked, lowering drink-drive limits won’t even reduce accidents, because most involve drivers way over the line anyway. But it will hammer hospitality. Scotland’s 2014 limit cut didn’t reduce crashes – it just accelerated pub closures. Labour’s plans risk turning village locals into ghost towns, all while ministers preach about ‘levelling up’ the country beyond London.

And let’s not forget: Labour’s reforms are as much an attack on drivers as they are pubs. The proposals scream nanny-state overreach. Suspend licences pending court for suspects? Roadside saliva tests for drugs? It’s part of a broader war on motorists, from ULEZ expansions to 20mph zones. Transport secretary Heidi Alexander talks of ‘decisive action to make our roads safer’, but this feels like performative virtue-signalling. Edmund King, president of the AA, calls it ‘positively radical’, but for whom? Not the rural driver navigating unlit, potholed roads home after a ploughman’s lunch.

Look at the UK government’s own stats, and the rationale crumbles further. The drink-driving limit hasn’t budged since 1967, yet the proportion of fatalities involving illegal alcohol levels has nonetheless plummeted since 1979, from a quarter of all road deaths then to 18 per cent in 2022. In 2023, they declined again by six per cent. The campaigns, THINK! ads, breathalysers and cultural shifts are working. So why fix what ain’t broke?

Maybe it’s all about Europe. The UK boasts the highest drink-drive limit in the EU (or did, pre-Brexit), and Labour can’t stand the outlier status.

Or maybe it is just the urban-rural divide. Transport minister Lilian Greenwood, on Times Radio, blithely suggested taking a bus or a taxi to the pub, or having ‘low-alcohol drinks’. Charming, but utterly joyless, as well as being clueless about rural reality, where there might be buses every two hours if you’re lucky, and certainly not late on a Friday. Taxis cost a fortune from the nearest town. And you try booking an Uber in my part of the world… We’re invisible to these urban elites, good only for performative legislative beatings to appease city supporters who view the countryside as a quaint backdrop for weekends away.

This isn’t compassion, it’s control. Labour’s vision? A sterilised Britain where personal risk is outlawed, freedoms curtailed and rural ways eroded. The pint in the pub isn’t just refreshment; it’s rebellion against such meddling. If ministers truly cared about lives, they’d invest more in pothole repairs or rural broadband to reduce isolation-driven depression. Instead, we country folk are collateral in their culture war. Raise a glass while you can, before it’s taxed, banned or regulated away.

Gawain Towler is a commentator and an elected board member of Reform UK.