The pint is served roughly. It spills as it lands on the bar, sending a little eddy of suds down the glass, into the lattice of branded rubber matting, a place where neither scrubbing brushes nor a desperate human tongue can penetrate. Typical. My 5p Reform windfall, gone in the clumsy flick of a wrist. I guard the pint carefully as I weave a perilous path to my table, quietly satisfied at pushing another struggling family closer to penury.
Still, what is the pub if not a place for letting loose and sidestepping the usual laws of economics? It is surely no accident that Nigel Farage chose a Westminster boozer to launch his latest crime against mathematics last week, promising a £3bn tax relief for the hospitality sector – equivalent to 5p off a pint – to be paid for by the reinstatement of the two-child benefit cap.
