HOW LABOUR KILLED THE CORNISH HOLIDAY
In July 2020, three Cornish locals stood on a bridge above the A30 and held up a sign. It was positioned so that drivers from “up country”, as they are nicknamed in these parts, could read its message, which was a simple one: “Turn around and f--- off.”
Cornwall always seems to bear the brunt of things. When an Atlantic storm swirls towards the UK, Cornwall gets it first. When the Covid-19 lockdown was lifted, staycationers flooded into Cornwall (hence that sign). Cornish towns suffer either from seasonal overcrowding or economic deprivation, with little in between.
Now, the Cornish holiday is on the brink. Holiday cottage calendars are empty for August, pubs are closing and hotels are paying for visitors’ petrol. Six years after that infamous sign above the A30, how did it come to this?
The hotel paying for visitors’ fuel
The white-washed St Moritz Hotel is set in a prime location, with far-reaching views across the Camel Estuary. Standing on the balcony of the hotel’s penthouse suite, co-owner Hugh Ridgway describes this as an “amazing bit of unchanging north Cornwall coast”.
One thing has changed quite dramatically in recent years. With business rates, national insurance, VAT and minimum wage increases all taken into account, the running costs of the St Moritz Hotel will be up by £100,000 in 2026.
“In order to survive, we are now employing fewer people. But we have to deliver the same quality of holiday,” says Ridgway, who acquired the hotel with his brother Steve in 2000.
Business owners and visitors face the possibility of a new tourist tax, after the Labour Government gave English local authorities the power to introduce visitor levies. If rolled out, the burden will fall on hoteliers to collect this tax.
“That is just completely and utterly bonkers. I cannot believe it’s even still on people’s lips. We’re already unpaid tax collectors, and now they want us to collect more,” says Ridgway. Such levies are designed to fund local infrastructure projects, such as reopening public toilets, but Ridgway believes the money will fall into a civil service pot.
Despite the financial headwinds, St Moritz recently announced that it would cover the extra cost of fuel caused by the Middle East crisis. Families will receive a discount, ranging from £15 to £30, depending on their postcode.
“It’s going to be a difficult summer for people. Even for the more wealthy. We’re doing anything we can to persuade them to take a staycation rather than jump on an easyJet or Ryanair flight.”
The death of a tourist board
In October 2025, Visit Cornwall went into voluntary liquidation after government grants dried up. Last April, Labour cut Visit Britain’s budget from £18.85m to £10.57m. Other tourist boards around the country, including Visit Kent and Visit Herts, have also folded.
Like the abandoned quarries that scar the Cornish landscape, the disappearance of Visit Cornwall has left a chasm in local tourism promotion and management. So in January of this year, a group of businesses and tourism associations organised a summit at the Eden Project. The chair of the South East Cornwall Tourism Association (SECTA), Sue Jewell, was one of those in attendance.
“The problem is that our country is being run by people who have never run a business. They just don’t understand it. They don’t think about the people hoovering up the dog hairs. Cleaning out the fireplace. Replacing the melted frying pan,” Jewell says at her home in Bodmin, her dog darting between us at quadruple speed.
Under policies introduced by Michael Gove, local authorities can impose 100 per cent council tax on second properties. There is also now a second-home stamp duty surcharge, increased from 3 per cent to 5 per cent under the Labour Government. The new “mansion tax” will introduce further financial burdens for owners of larger properties.
These have been framed by both Conservative and Labour governments as ways to address the housing crisis in tourist areas. However, the second-home crackdown has hit local businesses and caused the stagnation of local housing markets, as sellers struggle to shift their properties.
Jewell says things have become so tight that she can no longer afford to employ a local cleaner to manage the turnovers at her holiday cottages. Instead, she and her son are having to cope on their own.
“There’s a perception that we’re all just rich second-home owners, but that’s not the case. For many of us, this is our main source of income,” she says.
Cornwall suffered a difficult 2024 for tourist numbers, with a 12 per cent drop compared to the year before. In 2025, the uplift was modest. Due to last-minute booking patterns, the picture for 2026 is unclear, but at one of Jewell’s holiday lets, which is usually fully booked for the whole summer, the calendar is empty for August.
“It feels like we have been hung out to dry, and we’ve been left unsupported,” she says. “But we’re not going down without a fight.”
A beloved local pub, teetering on the brink
The Seven Stars in Falmouth is a purist’s inn, the pub of the mind’s eye, with low tables, hundreds of keyrings dangling above the bar, and a sign saying “Mobile phones forbidden in this area”. Beside it, a mobile device is nailed to the wall.
The pub first opened in 1660 and has been in the same family for 178 years, spanning seven generations. Recently, it was named one of The Telegraph’s Top 500 Pubs in England.
“When our business rates dropped on the doorstep, that wasn’t a pleasant opening of an envelope,” says landlady Amy Bennetts, who is having to reduce staff hours to make ends meet. “We’re being taxed out of a business.”
Due to a suite of rising business costs under the Labour government, Bennetts has been forced to put up the price of a pint of Guinness from £4.80 to £5.20.
“I hate putting beer prices up, because it has a knock-on effect. The guy who doesn’t see anybody all week comes into the pub for a conversation. One less pint is one less conversation,” says Bennetts. Competing with a nearby Wetherspoon pub, where pints are as low as £1.99, is another struggle for freehouses such as the Seven Stars.
Now, along with the landlady of The Driftwood Spars in St Agnes, Bennetts is launching the Cornwall Pub Collective.
“If we try to come together as a united voice, and lobby local government, then surely that’s going to have an impact. I don’t mind walking up to Westminster with a barrel in my hands if I have to,” she says.
It is noon on a Monday and two men prop up the bar. Another walks in and is served “the usual” before he can take a pew. Can this pub, which opened during the reign of Britain’s last King Charles almost 400 years ago, survive these struggles?
“I don’t know,” says Bennetts. “I said to somebody just before Christmas that, deep down, I feel like it might be my last one. After 178 years, we’ve never had to deal with anything quite like this.”
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