Business
Are Reeves and Starmer Killing UK Restaurants?
There is a particular kind of silence that descends on a once-busy restaurant when last orders have come and gone, the candles have guttered, and the chef is out the back having a cigarette and contemplating bankruptcy. It is the sound of a small dream dying. And right now, across Britain, that silence is becoming deafening.
I have just returned from dinner at a perfectly nice neighbourhood bistro in west London, where the owner, a man who quit a comfortable banking job to chase the romance of feeding people, confessed somewhere between the burrata and the lamb that he is closing in September. Not because nobody comes. They come. They eat. They tip. They order the second bottle. But the maths, he sighed, no longer mathses.
The story is the same in every postcode. UKHospitality reckons we lost roughly one pub or restaurant every single day last year. The Hospitality Rising figures are grimmer still: chefs walking away, dining rooms going dark, sites being flogged off to coffee chains and vape shops. And yet our Chancellor has decided that what this fragile, brilliant, world-beating sector really needs is a thumping great kicking.
Let us count the bruises. From April 2025, employer National Insurance jumped to 15 per cent. The threshold at which businesses begin paying it was slashed from £9,100 to £5,000, which is a fancy Treasury way of saying that every waiter, every glass-polisher, every Saturday-morning kitchen porter is now considerably more expensive to employ. Throw in the National Living Wage rising to £12.21 an hour, business rates relief shrivelling from 75 per cent to a measly 40 per cent, and a stubborn refusal to cut hospitality VAT to anything resembling our European competitors, and you have what UKHospitality calculated as an additional £3.4 billion annual hit on the sector. Three-point-four. Billion. With a B.
To which Rachel Reeves and Sir Keir Starmer have essentially shrugged and said: tough. Get on with it. Be more productive. Use AI. Yes, really, the Prime Minister actually suggested artificial intelligence was the answer to the front-of-house labour crisis. Has the man ever tried to get a chatbot to recommend the Picpoul de Pinet over the Sancerre, or to deal with a four-top of accountants splitting the bill seventeen ways?
I am not, as a rule, a conspiracist. But I am beginning to wonder whether this is plain incompetence or something darker. Because if you sat down with a clean sheet of paper and deliberately tried to design a policy package guaranteed to incinerate independent restaurants, you would land more or less exactly where this Government has landed. Hammer the labour costs. Hammer the property costs. Refuse the one tax cut, VAT, that would actually move the needle. Drive away the high-spending non-doms who used to keep Mayfair humming, propose extending the smoking ban to pub gardens and pavement tables, then make it harder still to recruit from abroad. Magnifique.
The rationale, presumably, is that restaurants are a luxury, frequented by people who can afford it, staffed by people who do not vote Labour. Easy political target. Wrong, of course. Our sector employs 3.5 million people, more than half of them under 30, many in their first proper job, learning skills no classroom ever taught, graft, courtesy, and how to charm a furious German tourist out of a complaint about the size of the prawns. Killing restaurants does not punish the rich. It punishes the kid from Croydon who wanted to be a sommelier, the Polish chef who built a life here, and the landlady whose pub still kept her village alive.
And here is the bit Reeves seems incapable of grasping: hospitality does not just feed us. It powers tourism, it props up high streets, it fills supply chains from Cornish dairies to Yorkshire breweries to the Kentish vineyards her colleagues love being photographed at. When a restaurant closes, the butcher feels it, the laundry firm feels it, the cab driver feels it, the florist feels it. You do not just lose a place to eat. You lose an entire ecosystem.
I had hoped, fool that I am, that this Labour Government might understand that. Many of its members, after all, claim to enjoy the occasional supper out, although one suspects most of theirs arrives by Deliveroo on the public purse. But policy after policy has revealed either profound ignorance of how a small business actually functions, or active hostility towards anyone who took a punt on themselves rather than waited patiently for a public sector pay rise.
The lights are going out across our high streets. The chairs are being stacked. The wine is being sold off at cost. And our Chancellor, when asked, musters only the platitude that growth takes time.
So does dying, Rachel. So does dying.
Richard Alvin
Richard Alvin is a serial entrepreneur, a former advisor to the UK Government about small business and an Honorary Teaching Fellow on Business at Lancaster University.
A winner of the London Chamber of Commerce Business Person of the year and Freeman of the City of London for his services to business and charity. Richard is also Group MD of Capital Business Media and SME business research company Trends Research, regarded as one of the UK’s leading experts in the SME sector and an active angel investor and advisor to new start companies.
Richard is also the host of Save Our Business the U.S. based business advice television show.
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Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, April 30, 2026. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s second day of testimony before Congress provided Democrats (Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
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Spirit’s shutdown has left travelers scrambling, with major airlines capping fares and offering limited relief options for stranded passengers, while displaced workers are being directed to hiring pipelines at competing carriers, as previously reported by FOX Business.
The Justice Department sued to block the JetBlue-Spirit deal under antitrust law, arguing it would eliminate a key low-cost competitor and raise prices on overlapping routes. A federal judge ultimately agreed, blocking the merger after a multi-week trial.
Spirit had struggled financially for years and had previously filed for bankruptcy as it sought to stabilize its business.
The Trump administration said it explored options to keep Spirit afloat, but a proposed bailout failed to materialize before the airline shut down operations, as FOX Business previously reported, leaving ongoing debate over whether earlier regulatory decisions played a role in its collapse.
Fox News Digital’s Robert McGreevy, Sophia Compton, Michael Sinkewicz and FOX Business’ Matthew Kazin contributed to this reporting.
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The Middle East conflict has worsened food security concerns in Southeast Asia. ASEAN nations are addressing vulnerabilities through regional cooperation, with South Korea emerging as a key partner, supporting agricultural technology, rice reserves, smart farming, and bilateral agreements to strengthen long-term food security resilience.
Key Points
• The Middle East conflict has intensified food security concerns across Southeast Asia, threatening fertiliser supplies and supply chains. ASEAN has prioritized food security since the 1970s, though most member countries score poorly in sustainability and adaptability, with vulnerabilities worsened by El Niño and ongoing global conflicts.
• South Korea actively supports ASEAN food security through partnerships including the ASEAN Plus Three Emergency Rice Reserve, AFACI agricultural research initiatives, and digital farming systems, while also providing humanitarian rice assistance to disaster-affected countries like Myanmar.
• Bilateral cooperation between South Korea and ASEAN nations focuses on agrotechnology, including smart greenhouses in Indonesia, low-emission rice cultivation in Thailand, and livestock health monitoring in Malaysia, reinforcing sustainable agricultural development aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Food Security Challenges in Southeast Asia
The ongoing conflict in the Middle East has intensified food security concerns across Southeast Asia, particularly due to fertiliser shortages and supply chain disruptions. Malaysia and neighboring countries now face rising food prices and potential shortages. While immediate economic pressures demand urgent attention, long-term structural reforms are equally critical. ASEAN has recognized food security as a regional priority since the 1979 ASEAN Food Security Reserve agreement, and the 2025 ASEAN Summit reinforced this commitment through the “2045 ASEAN document,” which identifies food security and poverty eradication as central goals for the region’s future development.
South Korea as a Strategic Partner in Regional Food Security
South Korea has emerged as a vital partner in strengthening ASEAN’s food security framework, both regionally and bilaterally. Through the ASEAN Plus Three Emergency Rice Reserve, South Korea has demonstrated consistent commitment, including donating 3,000 metric tonnes of rice following Myanmar’s 2026 earthquake. At the multilateral level, South Korea supports key initiatives such as AFACI and AFSIS, promoting agricultural research, sustainable farming, and ICT-based data management systems. These efforts reflect a broader multidimensional partnership aimed at enhancing ASEAN-led food security strategies through technology, knowledge-sharing, and institutional cooperation.
Bilateral Cooperation and the Path Forward
Technology upgrading and agri-innovation remain central to South Korea’s bilateral engagements with ASEAN members. Collaborative projects include low-emission rice cultivation in Thailand, smart greenhouses and improved cold chain logistics in Indonesia, and livestock health monitoring research in Malaysia, following a formal MoU between both nations’ agriculture ministries. Singapore benefits through diversified food imports and joint agricultural research. Building on these established frameworks aligns with the Sustainable Development Goals and positions ASEAN to better withstand future food security challenges. Continued and expanded cooperation with partners like South Korea will be essential for achieving long-term regional resilience.
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