Our teetotal PM has a drink problem, as tax-addled whisky fans are finding out

You don’t have to look too hard to find a closed pub. Streets that before the pandemic were littered with last night’s takeaways are now lined with boarded-up boozers.

Browse through the pages of the publican’s paper, The Morning Advertiser, and you’d be forgiven for thinking it was edited by Dad’s Army’s Private Frazer, so loudly does “We’re doomed” shout from every page. Changing drinking habits, staff shortages, increased energy costs and increased everything else costs have all conspired to leave many pubs hanging on the edge of insolvency. Breweries are closing their doors too.

It’s not a surprise that on the day when alcohol duties rose by around 10 per cent an enraged brewer-turned-publican, Rudi Keyser, heckled Rishi Sunak as he was photographed pulling a pint at the opening of the Great British Beer Festival. The prime minister, who is happy to serve champagne to his guests, is an avowed teetotaller with a passion for Coca-Cola, so it’s unlikely that the new duties will make much of an impact on his very deep pockets. But they will hit the average drinker hard – particularly if a “hauf an a hauf” (a half of beer and a whisky) is the beverage of their choice. While the cost of their beer chaser will (in theory) remain the same, the cost of their “wee hauf” will rocket.

The “common sense” yet complex changes to the way duties are levied will see consumers of higher strength drinks such as spirits and fortified wines penalised, while those who choose to drink lower strength drinks will benefit. Spirits already account for 33 per cent of all the government’s alcohol revenues, and it’s hardly surprising that the Scotch Whisky Association – the trade body for whisky makers – described the new system as “a hammer blow for distillers and consumers”.

Teetotal chancellors of the exchequer and prime ministers and the booze business make uncomfortable bedfellows. Lloyd George, in his infamous 1909 Budget, the Immature Spirits Act of 1915 (which introduced a minimum age of three years for bottled whiskies), the increasingly penal wartime hikes on spirits duty and his restrictive licensing laws totally changed the face of the drinks industry in the UK.

The price of a bottle of whisky rose from 3s 6d in 1900 to 12s 6d in 1920. In order to reduce the impact of the new duties, distillers reduced the strength of their bottled whiskies and gins from proof or ten under proof (between 51 per cent and 57 per cent abv) to 20 or 25 under proof (between 40 per cent and 43 per cent abv), forever changing the character and complexities of their products. “Pre-war strength” whiskies were highly sought after in the 1920s and 1930s by whisky connoisseurs.

But for all his nonconformist principles and temperance fervour, Lloyd George was dissuaded from introducing wartime prohibition to the country, largely due to the influence of James Stevenson – later Baron Stevenson of Holmbury – marketing director of John Walker & Sons and “politically the most powerful man in the industry”.

Stevenson helped shape reforms that in the long term worked to the advantage of larger distillers and Scotch whisky blenders, and ensured that consumers were able to buy consistently higher quality whiskies, even if the strength was lower.

Ironically, on the day that Sunak’s UK duty increases were announced, Diageo, the owners of Johnnie Walker, reported global net sales growth of 15 per cent for their iconic Scotch whisky brand (and similarly robust figures for Guinness). The fortunes of the Scotch whisky business, and spirits more generally, have been transformed since the great recession of 2007. Distillers, not just of Scotch, but American, Canadian, Irish and Japanese whiskies simply can’t make enough of the stuff at the moment. It’s the same for other spirits producers too. And the more expensive “luxury” whiskies become, so the more drinkers want to buy them.

But of course, these drinkers aren’t the patrons of the ever-diminishing number of Victorian and Edwardian street-corner pubs. The Rover’s Return is a forgotten world for these 21st century tipplers. They’re not chasing their “luxury” 18-year-old single malts with a half pint of Tetley’s. Nor, with their £15 cocktails and £250 bottles of Scotch, are they likely to blanche at the prime minister’s duty increases. They are as remote from the world of the “ordinary drinker” – who is quite possibly a dying breed – as is the prime minister, who is flying off to Disneyland for his summer holidays with the words of his heckler nothing more than a distant echo.

Nick Morgan is the author of ‘Everything You Need to Know About Whisky: (But are too afraid to ask)’ and ‘A Long Stride: The Story of the World’s No 1 Scotch Whisky’