Wetherspoon chairman calls for UK to go it alone on customs

After sales from his JD Wetherspoon pub chain slowed in recent weeks, founder Tim Martin has weighed into the debate about post-Brexit customs arrangements by calling for Britain to go it alone and calling the EU a protection racket.

Reporting figures for the pub chain’s third quarter, Wetherspoon’s chairman said the UK should emulate New Zealand, Australia and Singapore by adopting free trade policies instead of cooperating on customs with the EU after Brexit.

Wetherspoon’s like-for-like sales for the 13 weeks to 29 April rose 3.5%, a slowdown from earlier in the year. Equivalent sales for the year to date rose 5.2%. Martin said he expected full-year trading to meet management expectations.

Government divisions over post-Brexit customs arrangements were exposed on 8 May when the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, said plans for a “customs partnership” were crazy. Johnson said if Britain collected import tariffs for the EU it would limit the UK’s ability to conduct its own trade deals. Pro-EU Conservative MPs are also threatening to vote against the government in favour of remaining a full member of the EU's customs union.

Martin, a long-standing advocate of Brexit, said: "A debate is currently taking place as to whether the UK should remain in the EU's customs union post-Brexit. I feel sure that the UK should leave. This will enable parliament to eliminate taxes on non-EU food and drink imports, reducing prices in the shops, which will immediately improve living standards.

"It makes no sense for the UK to continue to impose taxes on New World wines, coffee, rice and thousands of other products, and then to send the proceeds to Brussels. The EU masquerades as a free trade organisation, but it is really a protection racket which imposes import taxes on the 93% of the world's population that is not in the EU.”

Martin said Wetherspoon faced cost increases in the second half of the year including labour costs, business rates and the sugar tax. He said the likely effect of the FIFA World Cup on sales was not clear. Wetherspoon does not usually show football in its pubs.