Jim Armitage: Wetherspoons’ Jägermeister ban takes us back to the Seventies

In the seventies and eighties, one of the treats of the booze cruise to France was the exciting choice in their swanky supermarkets. Cheap Bordeaux and Roquefort for the parents, exotic sweets, Orangina and dairy desserts for the kids.

Back home, the shelves of our local grocers seemed dowdy in comparison. Vimto, Corona and a Vesta curry if you were lucky.

Thanks to closer union with our European neighbours, we’ve since got used to having their tasty produce over here. You no longer have to cross the Channel to leave corned beef and Ribena for San Pellegrino and parma ham.

Tariff-free trade has brought us better, happier choices.

However, there’s a class of Brexiteer who wants to push back on all this, returning to some warmly remembered days before foreigners, loud music and reliable electricity. A time when men drank Courage Best and women had gin or a glass of hock next door in the saloon bar.

Wetherspoons’ Tim Martin is one of them. Progressively, he is going through his drinks list and barring everything from Europe. Jägermeister, owned by the German Findel-Mast family, is the latest, along with cognacs Courvoisier (Japanese owned) and Hennessy (part-owned by Britain’s Diageo).

Little Englanders will cheer at the Wetherspoons bar tonight. They love Martin’s Eurosceptic sound-offs. Few go to him for premium liqueurs anyway.

You could argue, then, that this one publican’s decision doesn’t matter. Besides, even if others followed, would the absence of the Jägerbomb really diminish our nation? Frankly, at around midnight, when the party’s flagging and there’s no tequila, yes!

Why kill choice? Martin says there are fine English alternatives. Fine, but why exclude Europe’s drinks if they taste better and are more popular?

For now, we can ignore Wetherspoons and get our favourite tipples elsewhere.

But with no deal on EU tariffs and with a crippled pound, they will become increasingly pricey. Rivals will surely follow Wetherspoons’ lead.

Martin is offering us a look into the future. It feels like a weary pub crawl back to the 1970s.

Barclays’ tie-up with the Government to lend to smaller housebuilders is a step towards fixing the housing crisis, but with aims to create just 6000 homes, it doesn’t go far enough.

Before the financial meltdown a decade ago, small firms built the majority of new houses. Since then, their activity has withered as they’ve found it impossible to get bank funding.

This is because over-cautious regulators have decreed housebuilding so risky that banks must set aside big capital buffers to lend. Banks prefer to find borrowers elsewhere.

Until the rules are relaxed, most small builders will fail to get finance. The shortage of homes will continue.