Farage and Anderson’s sums aren’t the only thing that doesn’t add up about their plan to save the great British pub
T
he pint is served roughly. It spills as it lands on the bar, sending a little eddy of suds down the glass, into the lattice of branded rubber matting, a place where neither scrubbing brushes nor a desperate human tongue can penetrate. Typical. My 5p Reform windfall, gone in the clumsy flick of a wrist. I guard the pint carefully as I weave a perilous path to my table, quietly satisfied at pushing another struggling family closer to penury.
Still, what is the pub if not a place for letting loose and sidestepping the usual laws of economics? It is surely no accident that Nigel Farage chose a Westminster boozer to launch his latest crime against mathematics last week, promising a £3bn tax relief for the hospitality sector – equivalent to 5p off a pint – to be paid for by the reinstatement of the two-child benefit cap.
Never mind that HMRC’s own estimates blow a hole in his sums, assessing his buffet of inducements at about £10bn more than budgeted. Within these four wood-panelled walls, anything goes. The questions will be softball and the banter will be legendary. No mate, no no mate, hear me out. You know how Labour took 450,000 children out of poverty? What if we put them back in … and spent the money on pints for the lads instead?
