It is unbelievable: unconscionable. Westminster Council is moving against “vertical drinking” in pubs, starting with Soho. It claims drinking standing up is noisy and disruptive. It makes pubs, the council says, boisterous places where customers crowd round bars, get drunk and become pains in the neck in the street outside.

Westminster’s new draft licences would require pubs to be only for seating, to have “table service in place of open bar space”. Pub users should, presumably, sit down, shut up and wait to be served, like decent Westminster people who use wine bars.

The council balks at claims it seeks a ban, but here’s the thing: the reason the council apparently dislikes vertical drinking is the reason Britons have done it for ever. It is liquid sociability. It suits all sorts and ages. It encourages people to chat with strangers, pick arguments, spill beer down jackets and reduce traffic outside to a crawl. No one has to book tables or be turned them away when it is “full”. They can come and go, or stay all day.

British pubs are now closing fast. In the past 10 years roughly one has closed every day, to an all-time low of 39,000. Numbers have taken two big hits. The first was the loosening of planning........

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