Jeremy Clarkson has questioned why anyone would set up a business in Britain, revealing that he is actively looking into opening another pub and saying it would not be in the UK.
The Farmer’s Dog owner made a surprise appearance on the Conservative conference main stage in Birmingham on Monday, sitting alongside Victoria Atkins, the shadow environment secretary. Asked about opening another pub, he said: “I am actually looking, as we speak, quite hard into the possibility of opening another pub. But I can give you all a piece of information right now, it’s not going to be in the UK.”
He added: “Why would anybody set up a business in this country right now?”
In the same session, he accepted that another pub might never materialise, saying: “I’ll see if I can do it abroad somewhere. I probably won’t, but I’m dreaming of it.”
Small firms have faced a series of tax rises since Labour took power in 2024. From April 2025, employer National Insurance rose by 1.2 percentage points to 15 per cent and the threshold at which it becomes due fell from £9,100 to £5,000, a change forecast to raise around £25bn a year and announced by Rachel Reeves, John Healey’s predecessor as chancellor. The national living wage rose to £12.71 an hour this April, and a revaluation of business rates landed at the same time as pandemic-era reliefs for the high street were scaled back.
Hospitality groups have blamed rising employment costs for the pressure on pubs and restaurants. The British Beer and Pub Association has reported pubs closing at a rate of almost two a day in 2026, while one in five hospitality businesses told an industry survey in March that they feared going under within a year.
Mr Burnham has since announced measures aimed at reducing costs for the hospitality sector. Within days of taking office in July, he announced an additional 20 per cent business-rates reduction for pubs, social clubs and most live music venues in England from April 2027, on top of a 15 per cent cut introduced this April. The Government estimated the discount would save the typical pub about £1,100 a year, a partial victory for The Telegraph’s Save Our Pubs campaign.
Questions remain over how the measure will be funded. The plan, which costs around £100m, is to be paid for by a review of tax reliefs for businesses such as vape shops and a crackdown on online marketplaces that do not comply with their tax obligations. But within an hour of the announcement, one of Mr Burnham’s ministers admitted the two proposed sources of funding were still being looked at, with eligibility details deferred to the chancellor’s first Budget.
Clarkson knows the pressures at first hand. He opened The Farmer’s Dog in the Cotswolds in August 2024 and owns Diddly Squat farm nearby.
Clarkson also joked about Piddington. The Government plans to convert a former Army garrison about a mile from Piddington in Oxfordshire into accommodation for up to 1,256 male asylum seekers. In September, residents of the village, which has a population of about 350, voted 285 to 26 in a symbolic referendum to “secede from the UK and pursue self-determination”. Clarkson said: “I might have to go to Piddington. That’s abroad, isn’t it?”
Clarkson then turned to the family farm tax. “I think they didn’t understand it when they introduced it,” he said.
Under rules that took effect on 6 April 2026, qualifying agricultural and business property can receive 100 per cent inheritance-tax relief on up to £2.5m of qualifying value, with 50 per cent relief applying above that allowance, meaning an effective inheritance-tax rate of up to 20 per cent on qualifying value above it. Unused allowance can be transferred between spouses or civil partners, allowing up to £5m of qualifying agricultural or business assets to benefit from 100 per cent relief between them, on top of existing allowances. Before the reforms, qualifying agricultural property could generally receive 100 per cent Agricultural Property Relief.
The levy was announced by Sir Keir Starmer and Ms Reeves at their first Budget in November 2024 with a £1m threshold, then raised after anger from farmers and dissent among rural Labour MPs.
Clarkson argued that farms are different from other assets. “The person moving it doesn’t necessarily know how to farm. I mean, look at me,” he said. “You’re the only person who knows how that farm works because you grew up on it.” He added that it made “perfect sense” for Britain’s food security for farmers to pass on land “to the only people who know how to do it, which is your kids”.
Mr Burnham once sounded sympathetic. During the Makerfield by-election campaign, he told The Telegraph that farms and pubs were taxed unfairly, suggesting he would “look again” at changes to agricultural property relief. But last month, one of his ministers told the Commons the levy had struck the “right balance” since Ms Reeves increased the threshold.
Great British PAC reaction
Claire Bullivant, chief executive of Great British PAC, said:
“Jeremy Clarkson has done more than most politicians ever will to show the British public what it actually takes to run a farm, employ people, produce food and keep a rural business alive. He has become a formidable voice for British farmers, and he deserves enormous credit for refusing to stay quiet while they are being squeezed from every direction.
“When an entrepreneur like Jeremy Clarkson is openly asking why anybody would set up a business in Britain right now, the Labour Government should be listening very carefully. Britain should be the best place in the world to start a business, build something, employ people and invest, not a country where successful people increasingly wonder whether they would be better off taking their next venture overseas.
“And our family farms are not simply assets on a spreadsheet. They are businesses, homes, livelihoods and, in many cases, the work of generations. Taxing families in a way that can force them to break up or sell the very farms they are trying to pass on is profoundly short-sighted.
“Clarkson understands something Labour always forgets: you do not create prosperity by punishing the people who create it. The UK needs a government that backs our farmers, backs our pubs, backs entrepreneurs and makes people want to invest here again.
“The fact that someone as proudly British as Jeremy Clarkson is even contemplating opening his next pub abroad should set alarm bells ringing in Downing Street. Wake up Labour!”
Mike Rouse of Great British PAC added:
“Any government should seek to change Jeremy’s mind, and that of all those who, like him, are musing about where to locate their business. We are facing nothing short of an economic emergency whilst chasing away the merchants of growth and creators of jobs. Britain’s economic future depends on an urgent pro-business refocus.”
Clarkson said he was “looking, as we speak, quite hard” at opening another pub and was clear about where it would not be: “It’s not going to be in the UK.” His question to the conference was equally direct: “Why would anybody set up a business in this country right now?“
