As we reported, Keir Starmer recently recorded the worst approval rating of any PM since polling began. Now, a new record has been set in Starmer’s Britain – namely the price of a pint hitting £10 in London.
Obviously, we can’t entirely blame Starmer for the creeping effects of inflation. What we can do, however, is point out that £10 pints are only so bad because Starmer has done little to reverse the impacts of Tory-driven austerity:
£15 minim wage doesn’t seem so crazy next to a £10 pint does it https://t.co/9p4kc3h64V
— Harry Eccles (@Heccles94) May 3, 2026
Starmer decimates spending power
As reported by the Independent, many “high-end bars” are now charging £10 or more. As they added:
A pint of Moretti or Heineken is sold at £11, while a half pint is going for £8. Guinness is sold at £10 a pint, according to the menu for the bar, attached to the Chesterfield hotel.
The cost of bottled beer is even steeper; the Connaught Grill in Mayfair is charging £12.50 for a 330ml bottle of Noam lager or Curious IPA.
Given the US and Israel’s disastrous war on Iran, fuel prices have risen. Fuel costs impact any goods which require transportation, and as such inflation is back on the menu.
Ash Corbett-Collins of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), meanwhile, has blamed the government for rising prices:
It’s not surprising pint prices are rising across London and the UK, but our pubs and breweries should not be blamed. Extreme financial pressures from the Government are forcing publicans to either raise their prices or consider closing for good.
The Government must recognise pubs for the essential wellbeing benefits their community spaces provide, and their essential contributions to the economy.
They must recognise increased employer National Insurance contributions are adding to cost pressures, commit to a fairer business rates system, lower VAT on food and drink for hospitality businesses as well as alcohol duties so publicans can keep their doors open and pub-going becomes affordable again.
The Independentadded that the government has decided to maintain a business rate discount which the Tories introduced during the pandemic. That reduction is 75%, but was set to drop down to 40%.
Solutions
We covered the Green Party’s £15 minimum wage proposal on Sunday 3 May. As we noted, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg was incredibly upset about the idea of people earning a moderately decent living. Laura Kuenssberg earns £400k-a-year working for a publicly funded broadcaster, by the way.
Kuenssberg highlighted that £15-an-hour would represent a significant cost to small businesses. The Greens have a plan to get around that – namely through small businesses paying less in tax because big businesses finally pay their share. We also made the point that the general populous earning more money will be good for businesses, because more people will have disposable income.
It’s not wrong to be concerned that increasing wages could lead to disastrous price hikes. Obviously, we need to find a balance. The issue is we’ve been unbalanced in the opposite direction for decades. This saw in-work poverty increase in the 2010s followed by intense inflation in the 2020s.
To be completely fair to Labour, wage growth is just about outpacing inflation. The problem is that after years of austerity and cost-of-living crises, ‘moderately outpacing inflation’ barely touches the sides. An even bigger problem is that Trump’s war on Iran is certain to push inflation back up again.
Decisive action
Coming after the Tories, Labour needed to drastically reshape the economy. Instead, they stuck to the outdated neoliberal system that led us here. It wouldn’t even be accurate to say they’ve given it a fresh lick of paint; they just increased spending a bit and hoped that would be enough.
£10 a pint is only ridiculous because we live in a world in which some things have massively inflated and others have not. As Best Brokers showed, this is the difference between wage growth and house prices over the past few decades:
Obviously, there is a cumulative drag to this stuff, with each new generation poorer than the last.
On the plus side, though, MPs are still getting discount booze at work:
While the average pint in central London now costs £7 and some bars are now charging £10 or more for draught or bottled beer….there is one place in central London where the drinks prices are significantly lower because of taxpayer funded subsidised prices – the House of Commons. pic.twitter.com/U3ifwigkwR
— James Melville
(@JamesMelville) May 4, 2026
Yeah – so if you want to get pissed for cheap still, maybe consider becoming an MP?
Featured image via The Canary
By Willem Moore
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