Stickers reading ‘No Labour MPs’ have been placed on windows and doors by hospitality business owners expressing their anger at the Government’s autumn budget and the rising burden of business rates.
The movement began last week with a number of business owners making a stand, including James Fowler, owner of The Larder House in Southbourne, who placed a sign on his door barring Labour MPs.
In a post on Instagram, Fowler writes that has been sharing the stickers with local business owners who, like himself, “are now all rather annoyed and very concerned - not just for our own businesses but those across the whole country”.
He says: “We feel we are just being ignored. We’ve kept going on about pressures coming out of Covid, energy price increases, lack of equality compared to Europe with VAT and payroll increases. In the latest budget we’ve been hit with a sneaky increase in business rates which even chatting to traders today they are unaware of. It’s too much now - we are simply being taxed out.”
He adds that his stance isn’t political. “I’m not using this to promote any other political party,” he says. “It’s to show how I feel right now following the last last budget.”
Andy Lennox, who runs the Old Thatch pub in Dorset, has also put up signs in his venue banning Labour MPs. Speaking to The Telegraph, Lennox said that stickers were springing up in different towns across Britain.
“We’re getting requests from across the UK for stickers and advice on how to get involved, from bosses as far away as Clacton-on-Sea,” he said.
A poster in his venue outlines his stance, stating that ‘the Government now makes more in a pint than your pub does’ and that a hospitality businesses is forced to close every day.
“Hospitality have engaged with MPs, written to MPs, lobbied Government in some of the most ‘successful’ campaigns in our history. The result. The Government has taxed us more,” the sign reads.
“We can’t afford to go on strike. We can’t afford to close. We can’t afford to go to London, so this is our industrial action, in the only way we can.”