There is nothing quite like an old-fashioned pub, with all the trimmings: an open fire, faded prints of Spitfires, and framed news reports from half a century ago. It was good, therefore, to hear that the UK Government has floated the idea of extended opening hours, with a view to reviving the Great British Boozer. This is despite the usual muttering from public health experts, determined as ever to bully us all into living to 97 without enjoying any more of that time than is strictly necessary.

The hospitality industry has been struggling to recover from the twin blows of the Covid pandemic and the rise of remote working, and so has welcomed the proposals. But with the best will in the world, any Government initiative to arrest the decline of pubs is trying to push water uphill, for a variety of reasons.

Consider that there are easier ways to buy alcohol outside licensed premises, tighter rules on drink-driving, and the smoking ban, not to mention the demographic and cultural changes meaning that younger people are more likely not to drink alcohol. Altogether, the pressures on the country’s traditional pub culture are relentless.

Rising prices aren’t helping either. London pubs routinely charge upwards of £8 for a single pint. Even outside London, drinkers are lucky to see much change from a fiver unless they throw themselves on the mercy of Tim Martin, founder of Wetherspoons and therefore one of the greatest living British philanthropists. When most supermarkets will sell you four cans for the price of a single pub drink, it’s easy to see why people choose to stay home instead.

In the small town where I grew up, which sustained half a dozen pubs throughout my childhood, two such establishments are currently up for sale, with one of them destined to be turned into private houses. A third — which could trace its history back 600 years — has become a branch of Costa Coffee.

Country pubs in particular have often been forced to become, effectively, destination restaurants with a bar attached, simply to survive. Many have not survived, especially in smaller or out-of-the-way villages. Mass car ownership and the near-disappearance of the rural laborer, among other factors, have seen to that. In the place where we used to live, in deepest Kent, you could do a circular walk of less than 10 miles that would take you past half a dozen closed pubs, some of them in barely noticeable hamlets.

There will always be pubs, of course. They will not disappear completely from either towns or the countryside. But the sad fact is that the world in which they flourished is fading away. They will thus have to find themselves a new role in a very different social landscape.

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Niall Gooch is a public sector worker and occasional writer who lives in Kent.

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