Darling saw no votes in any concessions

By now we all know the bad news. The Government utterly failed to listen to the clamour of voices coming from the industry and imposed yet another duty increase of 2% on beer drinkers, despite the best orchestrated campaign of many years in Axe the Tax.

The numbers coming out of Whitehall are utterly horrific — a decade of debt, a public sector borrowing requirement that is simply monumental in scale, with tax rises now and in the future that will suck every penny of disposable income out of the pockets of consumers.

Let's not kid ourselves. Whether it's this Government or one of the other lot that takes over this poisoned chalice, we're stuffed.

The Axe the Tax campaign was the best effort we've made in a long while to get MPs to listen, but while they nodded and made the right bleating noises, the Chancellor never had any intention of letting go of his addiction to "sin taxes". Booze, fags, fuel, flights are all front-line tax-raising targets, not just for now, but for ever.

With the state of this country's finances close to bust, the stage is set for year after year of tax rises — no doubt couched under a "good for your health" message. We've had rises of 18% in duty in 2008 and now another 2%, plus VAT's going back up again in December; remember, we paid in higher duty for its reduction last year, too!

If ever there was a time for a Budget break for us, it was now, with the impact of higher taxes and the recession causing real pain in pubs — but not a chance! Our industry is so diverse, so spread geographically, there are simply no votes in any special concessions.

Not even the car industry, with production down 50%, and its manufacturing centres in Labour strongholds, could persuade the Government to stump up all the cash. They've got to find half the dosh for the idiotic £2,000 scrappage scheme.

No, we can lobby all we like — and we must not give up — but let's get real, we're talking Desperate Chancellors here. In future Budgets we may look back wistfully to when we got angry about just a 2% rise.

The term "daylight robbery" comes from the Window Tax. Introduced in the 17th century as a temporary measure, it lasted rather longer — 155 years — or about 154 years more than this robbing Government will last.