Tim Martin needs more EU workers to staff his Wetherspoons pubs – or maybe it’s time for Leave-voting Brits to step up

Where, one wonders, have all the unemployed British gone? Ending free movement of workers across the biggest single market in the world was, after all, supposed to open up exciting opportunities

“You couldn’t make it up” – that seems to be the overwhelming reaction to the news that Wetherspoons boss, arch Leaver and untidy hair enthusiast Tim Martin is calling for more workers from the European Union to be allowed into Britain so that he can actually staff his public houses.

You can, I expect, detect the whiff of irony. Where, one wonders, have all the unemployed British gone? Ending free movement of workers across the biggest single market in the world was, after all, supposed to open up exciting opportunities for Britons in such fields as, well, potato fields, cleaning out our completely safe and Covid-protected care homes for the minimum wage and, indeed, dishing up the breakfasts and throwing out the drunks in the 925 Spoons establishments that adorn the high streets of the United Kingdom.

What was the guy thinking? Well, I can answer that. In 2016, Martin admitted that about 3,500 of his staff, around one in 10 of them, were from overseas. One supposes a goodly proportion of those were from EU states. No doubt they dutifully distributed his Leave campaign beer mats and newspapers to be read by bored punters over a pint of Stella and a full English. You may wonder how many of these loyal, hard-working Spoons bar folk have gone back to Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia and so on just so that Nigel Farage doesn’t have to listen to so many foreign voices on the train back to Kent.

Now, to be fair to Martin, he did have the eccentric idea in those days that the UK should leave the EU but actually retain and allow freedom of movement for EU workers in the UK. Because, if you remember, everyone had their own definition of Brexit in those days (including me, a mild Leaver who wasn’t too bothered about immigration).

Martin said: “Those people who are entitled to work here from the EU now should be entitled to work here after the referendum. If we leave, the rules should be the same as they were in Ireland before the EU – where people from Ireland could come and work here.” I’m not making it up, and presumably, neither was he.

So there you go. To be scrupulously fair I should also add that a work visa for the UK, such as Martin is now demanding for his bar staff, is not the same as complete freedom of movement, and there is no reason in principle why the UK shouldn’t issue more of them for the benefit of the leisure sector.

On the other hand, we have the points-based immigration system invented by Priti Patel (who, come to think of it, would make a good Peggy Mitchell-style pub landlady – “get aht of my country!”). This new system is supposed to attract software engineers and biotechnologists rather than pint pullers. The “brightest and the best” are supposed to be making their way here as we speak, Covid permitting, and they’re not going to be collecting the empties in a boozer.

I’m not expecting Martin to admit anytime soon that what we have now isn’t the Brexit he voted for and campaigned for, but maybe he could give us the benefit of his lounge bar wisdom on our current predicament. You could probably fit it on the back of a beer mat.

Clarification - 21 June 2021: Since publication of this article, Wetherspoon has been in touch with us to say it has not experienced any atypical recruitment issues and was in “a reasonably good position”. The UK newspaper that originally reported this story has also since clarified its article. It is accepted that Wetherspoon is not facing staff shortages or recruitment issues. We apologise for any confusion and are happy to correct the record.