Hamish Champ: Would the Tories do a better job for the pub trade?
Alistair Darling's Budget speech was painfully short on positive news for the pub industry and long on its ability to induce incredulity in all those who listened to the rest of it.
The hollowness of the Chancellor's bold - bonkers? - claim that the UK would return to growth at the end of this year was magnified ten-fold a matter of days after his borrowing bonanza, when new figures suggested the economy was even more off-kilter than had been previously predicted.
Surely Darling's credibility as head of the nation's finances is completely shot to pieces?
So what now? Some industry figures I spoke to in the wake of the Chancellor's cock-up were baying for political blood. "Remove Labour from power!", they thundered, although anyone marching on Parliament these days demanding such an event is likely to be met with a pretty swift response from the Boys In Blue, à la the G20 shenanigans. After all, we don't do dissent anymore in this country, do we?
However others were more circumspect, suggesting - rightly in my view - that the industry ought to continue presenting its case to the current crop of government ministers for as long as they hold the baton of power, while at the same time courting the main Opposition parties to get a sense of what any new administration would do.
With this in mind I keenly awaited what Tobias Ellwood, the Tory shadow licensing minister, had to say at last week's Association of Licensed Multiple Retailer's 'Business Day' event, held in London the day after the Budget.
Sadly, my expectancy turned to disappointment, as ol' Tobes baled out and sent along his colleague, Justine Greening, instead.
A former accountant, Greening is shadow minister for local government and communities and the MP for Putney, a leafy part of South West London. She's worked on the shadow Treasury team in her time too, so she's clearly no slouch.
But she's still a politician. I didn't expect her to answer my question - whether a Tory government would freeze the national minimum wage or dump it altogether - because that's not the sort of thing that Opposition types do with less than a year to a general election.
She didn't disappoint, beyond saying the Tories wouldn't - couldn't - claw back that which had already been agreed. She did hint strongly however that the industry couldn't expect her party to tackle the thorny issue of supermarket pricing if it came into power.
Still, clearly many in the pub trade - which after all is generally pretty conservative and in some cases stoutly Conservative - want to see the back of Labour, and such people will prefer a Tory administration.
And perhaps industry figures charged with talking to Opposition MPs will get a clearer idea in the months to come what areas Dave/Nick and their respective teams would tackle. The beer tie? The power of the pubcos? Who knows?
However on two issues I am prepared to stake my Chelsea FC membership: the smoking ban will not be rolled back, and beer duty will still go up year after year, if for no other reason than that taxes will surely have to rise exponentially for years to come regardless of who is in Downing Street, such is the mess we're now in. Happy days!
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P.S. The British Beer & Pub Association is still on the hunt for a permanent chief executive, isn't it? It could do a lot worse than giving the job - assuming he'd want it - to soon-to-be redundant Labour MP and pub industry stalwart John Grogan. Just a thought…
