The £4 pint. Threat or opportunity?

Sweet baby Jesus! Can it be true, as the news suggests, that the £4 pint will be with us in 2008?

Brewers are saying soring costs of hops and barley caused by the washout summer, plus other rising production costs, will mean they have no choice but to pass on the rise in cost to consumers. If true, it would see a huge accleration in pub closures and the closure of several brewers.

The Southport Drinker suspects part of this is brinkmanship with an already unpopular government. The coming of £4 pints and stories of cherished local pubs closing will be laid squarely at Gordon Brown’s door if he puts up duty on booze – which the Government has been preparing for by feeding a load of binge drinking scare stories and biased surveys to the press.

While the thought of a £4 pint chills me to bone, it is a useful nuclear-style deterrent to any foolish attempt to tax booze any more.

It is time to put the pub back at the heart of the community by slashing duty on cask ale. Brown (sorry, I mean, er, Alistair Darling) must think creatively.

By slashing pub duty and increasing supermarket duty (but only a little, see why here) he can tick all the boxes and keep everyone happy. Otherwise there will be bloodshed on a scale hard to imagine.