Reform want to make beer cheaper by nicking money from kids

Never a party to miss a vapid appeal to populism, Reform UK have announced plans to cut beer duty by 10%. Except, how do they plan to fund such a feat? Well, by reintroducing the two-child benefit cap, of course.

Under Reform’s new commitment, the party would gradually phase out business rates altogether for UK pubs. Incidentally, they’d also plunge around 350,000 children back into poverty, and 700,000 into deep poverty.

The fact that a mainstream political party can suggest something like this without being spat on immediately by everyone in range indicates that something is deeply wrong with our country. I just don’t have a better way to say that.

Facts about taxes, as if that’s the problem here and not Reform

In Rachel Reeves’ autumn budget, the chancellor unveiled plans to hike business rates for pubs by 76%. This would boil down to additional costs of around £4,300 a year, after the current freeze ends.

However, on 27 January Labour announced that it would reverse course. Starting in April, pubs will now receive a 15% cut to new business rates bills, along with a two-year real-terms freeze.

Reform MP, and general shithouse, Lee Anderson stated that:

The loss of one pub is not just the loss of livelihood for a landlord, or the loss of a local employment hub. The loss of one pub is a loss to all of us as inheritors of a tradition dating back to Roman rule.

He went on:

Yet the Conservatives, and now Labour, have facilitated the closure of thousands of pubs over the last decade. Any contrition they show is false.

As things stand, beer duty – i.e., tax – averages out at around 49p a pint, although that varies according to the drink’s strength. Reform’s plan would knock 10% from that figure by taking the money directly from struggling children and families.

Likewise, the far-right party would also cut VAT from 20% to 10% for the hospitality sector. Reform said that the fact supermarkets don’t pay VAT on food sales gives them an unfair advantage over pubs, as if the party has any concept of what fairness is.

The entire plan would carry a cost of £2.29bn in the first year, rising to £2.9bn by the fourth year. For contrast, estimates suggest that scrapping the two-child benefit cap will cost £3.6bn a year once it’s fully implemented.

There’s something wrong with all of us

There are too many things to say about this, I don’t really know where to start.

As recently as May 2025, Reform was all for scrapping the two-child cap. Then, they flipped to saying it should only be lifted for two-parent full-time-working households, and finally to opposing the removal of the cap altogether. This pointless contrarianism was motivated purely by Labour getting behind scrapping the cap.

This plan is yet another monstering of people who receive benefits – this time pitting them against local pubs, of all things. These two causes are completely unrelated to one another, but Reform has very deliberately chosen to pair them off.

Given Reform’s projected image as champion’s of ‘British culture’, pubs make sense as their chosen cause to champion – but that’s not a compliment. The UK has massive problems with alcoholism and binge drinking, and has even topped world alcohol consumption charts in recent years.

And finally, this is children we’re talking about. Reform are proposing to take money directly from the very poorest children in the UK, and to then give it to pub landlords. If the landlords chose to pass that saving on to customers, a pint might be 5p cheaper, at the cost of making life harder for 100,000 kids.

When did we get to this point, as a society? How can a mainstream political party can suggest something like this without it immediately sinking them? Why are the right-wing papers reporting this like it’s a normal idea?

This job sometimes involves reading, seeing, and reporting on heinous things. Many of them are objectively more awful than this. But this is just such a banal, calculated, cynical evil, it’s turned something in my stomach. There is something deeply wrong with us all. None of this is OK.

Featured image via the Canary