𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Many moons ago before I paid taxes, I voted for the Labour Party. I did it for a very simple reason: they seemed to be the only party even pretending to take young people seriously. They didn’t have that stale, patrician Tory habit of speaking to the under-30s as if we were all pampered idiots who just needed to work harder and stop complaining. Then you look at the news this week and wonder what on earth happened. Two-thirds of UK hospitality businesses now say they plan to cut jobs and one in seven say they will close, thanks to the fresh wave of costs crashing into the sector from this month.

Nearly 10 years on, I now realise what a fool I was. Young people have been handed one bad deal after another and now the government is coming for one of the few industries that has traditionally been willing to take a chance on them and give them a first job: hospitality. The industry is being squeezed so hard that many businesses are preparing to cut staff, shorten hours or shut altogether. When you make it too expensive to hire, the first people to lose out are always the ones with the least experience and the fewest connections.

In other words, young people. And it’s not hard to understand why. The under-18 minimum wage has risen by 83% in seven years. How many private sector employees do you know who have had that sort of pay rise in that time frame?

At the same time, youth unemployment is already sitting at 16%, the highest in Europe. So we have a government presiding over dreadful youth unemployment while making it more expensive to hire the very people who most need a start.

We are told constantly that young people need to be resilient and ambitious, but how can they when the government keeps sawing off the lowest rungs of the ladder? And the people doing the sawing will be absolutely fine.

Ministers will still have salaries. MPs have even managed to give themselves a pay rise in the same general climate. This is the same week they removed the two-child benefit cap too. They are making choices, not just being led by forces out of their control like brainless oxen.

That is what makes this so maddening. Labour once liked to present itself as the party that understood how hard it had become to get started in life. Now it’s happier to load more pressure onto employers, and then be baffled when jobs start disappearing.

Week after week, hopeless ministers are sent out to explain why hammering hospitality is somehow necessary. Necessary for whom exactly? Necessary for the youngster who is about to have a gaping hole where their CV used to be because one of the country’s biggest entry-level employers can no longer afford to take them on?

And that is the wider point. This is not simply about one industry having a bad month. It is about a political class that does not understand business because so few of its members have ever run one. The survey behind this week’s headlines covered 20,000 hospitality businesses. It also found 42% are looking at reducing trading hours.

UKHospitality says wage changes alone will add £1.4 billion in costs to the sector. Hotels are facing sharp rises in business rates. Restaurants are being hit too. None of this is happening in a vacuum.

Hospitality was already dealing with thin margins, weaker consumer confidence and bills that keep rising whether customers show up or not. What this government has done is take a difficult climate and make it worse. They’re squeezing the life out of employers and pretending it’s social justice.

Reader, let me put it plainly: this government is to business what chronic IBS is to dating prospects. Unsettling at the best of times, and an outright menace when things get serious.

The tragedy here is that hospitality isn’t some fringe concern. It gives young people a way in, especially if they do not have polish, connections or some family friend waiting to wave them through the door. The very businesses that are part of the texture of normal life – pubs, cafés, hotels and restaurants – are being eroded.

A government that understood that would try to help them breathe. This one seems determined to do away with them completely.