I bought my first pint of bitter, in a pub in Slough, in 1972. It cost 12 pence. The Bank of England inflation calculator tells me that is the equivalent of £1.45 today. Yet a pint now sells for £10 in London. What went wrong? Many factors, of which the first was Britain’s entry into the EEC on 1 January 1973. We were eventually made to ‘harmonise’ our alcohol duties with our partners, leading to a drop in the duty on wine and a rise in that on beer, to reflect French cultural preferences. The most recent shock has been Rachel Reeves’s attack on small businesses with employer NI rises, punitive workers’ rights, ever-higher minimum wage etc. In the 1970s, the price of a pint, like the cost of a packet of cigarettes, was a major issue of concern in each year’s Budget. Now it is hardly debated. Cumulatively, the changes show how we have moved away from policies designed to please the working man. In those days, the word ‘man’ often just meant person, but in the case of beer it usually meant a man rather than a woman. Women were still a rarity in most pubs; in some, the bar would fall silent if a young woman entered. No women, except perhaps a few old ladies, entered on their own. Few women drank beer, especially bitter. The changes had some good effects – cheaper alcohol in supermarkets with fewer restrictions on when you could buy it, better food (in the 1970s, there was often no cooked food at all) and more comfort in pubs – but........

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