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Douglas Adams once wrote: “It is often said that a disproportionate obsession with purely academic or abstract matters indicates a retreat from the problems of real life. However, most of the people engaged in such matters say that this attitude is based on three things: ignorance, stupidity, and nothing else.”
Witty and damning in equal measure, this line could be the epitaph of the UK Government’s new Small Business Plan—a policy document so disconnected from lived reality it might as well have been composed on another planet, possibly one where fish and chips are illegal and pubs are considered acts of sedition.
The Government claims the plan is a bold reset of its relationship with small businesses.
It boasts reforms to tackle late payments, initiatives for easier access to finance, and a new Business Growth Service.
On paper, it looks comprehensive.
In practice, it seems blind to the real needs of business – especially in the sector I tested: hospitality.
A barometer, not a footnote
You see, hospitality isn’t just one sector among many – it’s a cultural cornerstone, a working-class institution, a network of community anchors.
The pub, the café, the curry house, the corner bakery—these are more than businesses; they are social infrastructure.
Yet hospitality has been hit harder than almost any other industry over the past five years. It was battered by pandemic closures, throttled by inflation, and now stands bludgeoned by a cluster of hostile policies:
- The abolition of the 75 per cent business rates relief scheme in March 2025
- Rising minimum wages and National Insurance contributions without proportional support
- Escalating energy and supplier costs
- Persistent staffing shortages post-Brexit; and, most damagingly
- A long-term decline in footfall: some venues report customer numbers down 25 per cent or more since 2019 – and takings down by as much as 40 per cent.
And now, insult piled on indignity: a Small Business Plan that almost completely ignores this context.
It offers tech optimism, finance reform, and red tape reduction, while saying virtually nothing about the actual cost of running a pub or café in 2025.
So This Writer feels moved to ask: is this ignorance, stupidity and nothing else—or is there something more deliberate going on?
By design: Cui Bono?
If this is not a failure of competence or comprehension, then it may be one of intent.
The uncomfortable truth is that certain sectors will benefit from the economic rearrangement that follows the slow death of independent hospitality:
| Sector |
How They Benefit |
| Large retail chains |
Vacant high street properties allow for aggressive expansion |
| Commercial landlords |
Can consolidate holdings, attract more reliable corporate tenants |
| Fintech & SaaS providers |
Government pushes digital tools as solutions, expanding their markets |
| Delivery platforms |
Reduced dine-in options boost app-based ordering |
| Construction & property developers |
Former hospitality venues ripe for conversion |
Is it coincidence that representatives of several of these sectors were prominent in the government’s press release endorsing the plan?
Steve Hare, CEO of Sage (a software company), praised the strategy as a step toward tech adoption and finance access.
Leigh Thomas of Intuit (QuickBooks) lauded the focus on unpaid invoices and digitisation.
HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest—all large banks—welcomed the emphasis on finance.
And commercial operators like Greene King celebrated licensing reforms that will benefit larger chains more than struggling independents.
Hospitality voices like Kate Nicholls of UKHospitality were present, but strikingly cautious. The language of her quote is optimistic, but weighted with conditions: “We need swift implementation… while we keep up the momentum on outstanding issues.”
The plan, in essence, speaks the language of scale.
It is a blueprint not for resilience, but for consolidation.
It rewards those with existing capital, infrastructure, and lobbying access.
It punishes the small, the local, and the traditional.
Death by policy
This is not a new phenomenon.
Successive governments have chipped away at the foundations of small hospitality, with rent hikes, alcohol duty, VAT inflexibility… punitive business rates.
But this plan marks a turning point.
Instead of supporting recovery, the Government is withdrawing support (business rates relief), raising costs (via wage burdens), and offering irrelevant fixes (digital growth platforms, abstract advisory services).
It’s a case of policy serving capital, not community.
I find myself regarding this as a deliberate tilt of the playing field – not with a bulldozer, but with a scalpel.
The big chains will be fine. The Starbucks’ and Wetherspoons’ of the world will absorb the costs.
But the family-run B&B?
The independent wine bar?
The ‘local’?
They will close quietly, one by one, until the street looks tidier, blander… and more profitable to those who do not live there.
Why is a Labour government doing this?
And so we come to the sharpest question of all: why is a Labour government—a party that still claims to represent working people—supporting policies that gut working-class leisure and livelihoods?
Hospitality is not a middle-class indulgence – it is a cultural right.
A warm pub on a cold night is not a luxury; it’s one of the last civic spaces where people can gather without agenda.
In destroying this, Labour risks not just an economic error but a cultural betrayal.
We were promised renewal.
We are being offered redevelopment.
We were told to expect growth.
Instead, we get gentrification, digitisation, and liquidation.
If this is what supporting small business looks like, hospitality would hate to see what neglect entails.
Douglas Adams may not have been writing about public policy, but his words apply with uncomfortable accuracy.
The Government’s Small Business Plan either ignores hospitality through ignorance and stupidity – or harms it by design.
Both explanations are damning – but are they reversible?
Our social culture deserves better than this.
It deserves policy made by people who understand its value—or at the very least, who don’t believe the future of the High Street should be served exclusively by fintech apps and venture capitalists.
It’s time to stop pretending this is a strategy for growth. If it’s any kind of strategy at all, it is one of elimination.
But then, I’m as inclined to believe that Adams was right and the people behind the plan were more interested in the academic and the abstract.
With them unable to address the problems of real life, we come back to the other alternative – a plan based on three things: ignorance, stupidity… and nothing else.
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Ignorance, stupidity, or deliberate design? Is the government killing small firms under false pretences?
Share this post:
Douglas Adams once wrote: “It is often said that a disproportionate obsession with purely academic or abstract matters indicates a retreat from the problems of real life. However, most of the people engaged in such matters say that this attitude is based on three things: ignorance, stupidity, and nothing else.”
Witty and damning in equal measure, this line could be the epitaph of the UK Government’s new Small Business Plan—a policy document so disconnected from lived reality it might as well have been composed on another planet, possibly one where fish and chips are illegal and pubs are considered acts of sedition.
The Government claims the plan is a bold reset of its relationship with small businesses.
It boasts reforms to tackle late payments, initiatives for easier access to finance, and a new Business Growth Service.
On paper, it looks comprehensive.
In practice, it seems blind to the real needs of business – especially in the sector I tested: hospitality.
A barometer, not a footnote
You see, hospitality isn’t just one sector among many – it’s a cultural cornerstone, a working-class institution, a network of community anchors.
The pub, the café, the curry house, the corner bakery—these are more than businesses; they are social infrastructure.
Yet hospitality has been hit harder than almost any other industry over the past five years. It was battered by pandemic closures, throttled by inflation, and now stands bludgeoned by a cluster of hostile policies:
And now, insult piled on indignity: a Small Business Plan that almost completely ignores this context.
It offers tech optimism, finance reform, and red tape reduction, while saying virtually nothing about the actual cost of running a pub or café in 2025.
So This Writer feels moved to ask: is this ignorance, stupidity and nothing else—or is there something more deliberate going on?
By design: Cui Bono?
If this is not a failure of competence or comprehension, then it may be one of intent.
The uncomfortable truth is that certain sectors will benefit from the economic rearrangement that follows the slow death of independent hospitality:
Is it coincidence that representatives of several of these sectors were prominent in the government’s press release endorsing the plan?
Steve Hare, CEO of Sage (a software company), praised the strategy as a step toward tech adoption and finance access.
Leigh Thomas of Intuit (QuickBooks) lauded the focus on unpaid invoices and digitisation.
HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest—all large banks—welcomed the emphasis on finance.
And commercial operators like Greene King celebrated licensing reforms that will benefit larger chains more than struggling independents.
Hospitality voices like Kate Nicholls of UKHospitality were present, but strikingly cautious. The language of her quote is optimistic, but weighted with conditions: “We need swift implementation… while we keep up the momentum on outstanding issues.”
The plan, in essence, speaks the language of scale.
It is a blueprint not for resilience, but for consolidation.
It rewards those with existing capital, infrastructure, and lobbying access.
It punishes the small, the local, and the traditional.
Death by policy
This is not a new phenomenon.
Successive governments have chipped away at the foundations of small hospitality, with rent hikes, alcohol duty, VAT inflexibility… punitive business rates.
But this plan marks a turning point.
Instead of supporting recovery, the Government is withdrawing support (business rates relief), raising costs (via wage burdens), and offering irrelevant fixes (digital growth platforms, abstract advisory services).
It’s a case of policy serving capital, not community.
I find myself regarding this as a deliberate tilt of the playing field – not with a bulldozer, but with a scalpel.
The big chains will be fine. The Starbucks’ and Wetherspoons’ of the world will absorb the costs.
But the family-run B&B?
The independent wine bar?
The ‘local’?
They will close quietly, one by one, until the street looks tidier, blander… and more profitable to those who do not live there.
Why is a Labour government doing this?
And so we come to the sharpest question of all: why is a Labour government—a party that still claims to represent working people—supporting policies that gut working-class leisure and livelihoods?
Hospitality is not a middle-class indulgence – it is a cultural right.
A warm pub on a cold night is not a luxury; it’s one of the last civic spaces where people can gather without agenda.
In destroying this, Labour risks not just an economic error but a cultural betrayal.
We were promised renewal.
We are being offered redevelopment.
We were told to expect growth.
Instead, we get gentrification, digitisation, and liquidation.
If this is what supporting small business looks like, hospitality would hate to see what neglect entails.
Douglas Adams may not have been writing about public policy, but his words apply with uncomfortable accuracy.
The Government’s Small Business Plan either ignores hospitality through ignorance and stupidity – or harms it by design.
Both explanations are damning – but are they reversible?
Our social culture deserves better than this.
It deserves policy made by people who understand its value—or at the very least, who don’t believe the future of the High Street should be served exclusively by fintech apps and venture capitalists.
It’s time to stop pretending this is a strategy for growth. If it’s any kind of strategy at all, it is one of elimination.
But then, I’m as inclined to believe that Adams was right and the people behind the plan were more interested in the academic and the abstract.
With them unable to address the problems of real life, we come back to the other alternative – a plan based on three things: ignorance, stupidity… and nothing else.
Share this post:
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