Andrew Pring asks 'What price Blair's legacy?'
It will not be Iraq or spin, or squandered public finances that most people in our trade will remember Tony Blair for.
The bungling of licensing reform, which turned a liberalising measure into a nightmare of bureaucracy, and the deeply divisive smoking ban, whose consequences have yet to be felt, but are bound to harm vast swathes of licensees - that's what will remain.
Back in 1997, everyone hated our antiquated hours.
The freedom to open and close your pub when you wanted to seemed only right in a modern, deregulating society. How hollow that sounds now.
The bungling of licensing reform, which turned a liberalising measure into a nightmare of bureaucracy, and the deeply divisive smoking ban, whose consequences have yet to be felt,
The gains - for most pubs, just an hour extra at night - seem hardly worth the new controls by police and councils and the red-tape hindrances that clog up the pub these days. And for that we can thank Tony Blair's craven capitulation to the Daily Mail.
Banning smoking in the pub has been an even more controversial measure for the trade, as so many more licensees were opposed from the moment Government signalled its intentions. Thousands of licensees bitterly resent the loss of both business and personal freedom.
Many licensees would place the minimum wage on the deficit side of the Blair balance sheet too. Central to 1997's manifesto, the measure has helped drive wages to 27% of pub sales, an all-time high.
On the credit side, the economy has boomed - massively so, though the credit probably goes more to Gordon Brown and his Tory predecessors. Pubs have benefited from the consumer splurge of the past decade - and that has given confidence for major investment in the pub's fabric.
As a result, many hard-working licensees have done very well indeed in the past decade, and a handful of pub bosses have enriched themselves beyond the dreams of avarice.
But the biggest plus of Blair's tenancy at No. 10 may yet turn out to be far less benign. Years of Spend, Spend, Spend means interest rates are on the up and consumers will start tightening their belts and staying at home far more.
Ironically, it is the two measures Blair is most reviled for that could lure in new crowds and help create a golden era for the trade. The absence of smoking and the gradually calming effects that later hours are having on public disorder mean pubs will become far pleasanter places. The pains of the past decade may yet prove worthwhile in the end. Not a bad legacy after all, perhaps.
