Why Britain’s pubs are disappearing

It’s not much comfort, if you like pubs, that the rate at which they’re closing across the UK has fallen from 138 per month for the past several years to 76 per month in 2018; small consolation too that this is partly the result of a rare example of government policy working — in the form of business-rate reliefs designed to help pubs survive as hubs of community life.

But the truth is that having lost more than 11,000 of them since the turn of the century, we’ve also largely lost the habit of spending our spare cash in them. How much better it would be for the economy, for social cohesion, and even for the ozone layer, if middle-class eco–protestors, instead of massing to cause havoc at Oxford Circus, devoted their leisure time and pocket money to putting the world to rights over pints of craft ale and plates of locally grown food in hostelries within cycling distance of wherever they live.