𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Rachel Reeves has been accused of lying after purportedly misleading a hospitality boss over Labour’s support for a key sector of the economy. Campaigner Adam Brooks, a publican, writer and commentator, told our podcast The Daily Expresso: “Reeves is a liar.” He then recalled how he had gone to dinner with Ms Reeves, Angela Rayner and others around three years ago, “knowing that they were going to come in power”. “The Conservatives were done,” Mr Brooks said. “They basically sat across the table to us, promising the world. ‘We love hospitality.'”

The activist added that the future Treasury chief told him that she believed pubs were “the are the heartbeat of community”, and Labour “will be different”. But the landlord said: “They’ve been ten times worse. So how how can I believe a thing any politician really says?” Mr Brooks added: “At the moment, I am with Reform, like my support is to Reform, just because I want change.

“I believe their immigration policies, I believe the business policies that they’re putting out there, cutting taxes.

“We need to be radical, and the uni-party are not going to do that.”

Although he cautioned: “But would Reform be my friends in government?

“No government’s your friend. People need to remember that.”

He added: “Governments are there to represent us, to protect us, serve us.

“Governments are now controlling us and going against us. Yeah, something’s fundamentally wrong in this country with politics, and people ask, ‘Should I go into politics? Do I want to do that?’ No.”

“Why? Because I think it’s rotten.

“And would I be the sort of person that, let’s just say I was with Reform or with another party and they said, ‘Adam, you’ve got to support that’, and I didn’t support that.

“Then I’m the type of person that goes, ‘F you, sod that.’

“So I wouldn’t last five minutes in politics.”

The Chancellor said in her Budget that she would introduce “permanently lower” business rates for more than 750,000 retail, hospitality and leisure properties.

The rates, which Ms Reeves said would be the “lowest rates since 1991” will be paid for through higher rates on properties worth more than £500,000, including the warehouses used by “online giants”.

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