LONDON — Against this backdrop of World Cup fever and extended licensing hours, a more enduring proposition for Britain’s pub trade is taking shape. The government has decreed that pubs may stay open until five in the morning so that England fans can watch their team play Mexico, with a kick-off at 1am. Police unions are grumbling.
They say the late decision is causing chaos to their roster system, and they point to the well-known combination of late-night heat, alcohol and sport that risks an upsurge in violent incidents. England’s route through the tournament was known months ago, the unions argue.
This could have been better prepared. But an early announcement, as one observer noted, would have negated the political benefit of the obvious populism of a feel-good gesture from the top. What is at stake here is a tension the government itself acknowledges.
It frets more than most about the lack of productivity behind the lack of growth in the UK economy. Yet it also recognises a difference between the cost of things and the value of things.
A nation that occasionally lets its hair down achieves an intangible benefit: making people feel that life is good, that they share common moments of joy or heartache of the sporting variety. Such moments, the thinking goes, are a positive in the socio-political balance sheet. Feeling good is good for the economy.
These fleeting gestures come and go. But Andy Burnham is talking about something more structural. He is discussing giving the pub trade the kind of tax-based lift that is normally the preserve of Irish politics.
Because he is talking of changing the tax law, this would be a longer-term lift than merely opening until five in the morning on one particular Monday in one particular year. Burnham gave his first broadcast interview since winning the Makerfield by-election.
The wider picture is that a politician who has just secured a parliamentary return is now positioning himself as the champion of an embattled sector. What is clear is that the conversation has moved from a single late night of World Cup indulgence to a debate about the long-term health of an institution that remains, for many, central to British social life.
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