Coronavirus failings spark furious response from Wetherspoon boss
Pub group Wetherspoon has launched an unusually-strong attack on the media and politicians, including Leeds West MP Rachel Reeves, as it sought to make the case that lockdowns are not beneficial to fighting Covid-19.
It has also acknowledged that it “expects to make a loss” in the financial year that ended a month ago, “both before and after exceptional items”.
In a wide-ranging complaint of how his £1.8bn-turnover business is hard done by, Wetherspoon chairman Tim Martin criticised the “tax advantage” of supermarkets over pubs and “harmful media misrepresentations” about how the group treated its staff at the start of lockdown.
Martin also restarted a fight from the start of lockdown when Wetherspoon was widely criticised for how it looked after its staff. In a widely-shared video, Martin had told staff to “go work at Tesco”.
However Martin said the company was “the subject of a large number of harmful media misrepresentations” and had got corrections and apologies from a long list of national and local publications.
He directed his ire at MPs, including Leeds West MP and Business Select Committee chair Rachel Reeves.
Martin was critical of a tweet by Reeves in March and said: “Rachel Reeves said Wetherspoon ‘refused to pay its 40,000 employees’ and ‘refused to lockdown altogether’. Both these statements by Reeves are completely untrue.”
Unacceptable that Wetherspoons has refused to pay its 40,000 employees until it receives its Govt loan – potentially in late April – after first refusing to lock down altogether. If bosses disregard employees' wellbeing then Govt should take tougher action to force compliance. pic.twitter.com/rEB3HwnzDy
— Rachel Reeves (@RachelReevesMP) March 24, 2020
Martin was also critical of the “political factionalism” of the debate around the merits of lockdowns.
Martin is a prominent Brexiter and that group is among the leading critics of lockdown strategies and instead prefer the so-called Swedish approach.
Martin said: “I believe, on the balance of the arguments, that avoiding full lockdowns and adopting the Swedish approach, is the better solution.”
In an unusual move, Wetherspoon today issued a statement to the stock market that including the transcript of an interview on April 29 broadcast by Sky News Australia with former Swedish chief epidemiologist Johan Giesecke to support its case.
It also reproduced an article, “The ice-cool Swedes are right” by Martin in the trade publication MCA.
Martin wrote: “There is no evidence, they say, that lockdowns work – when you lift the lockdowns, the virus resumes its course, which is mild or asymptomatic in most cases. Indeed this prediction may explain a resurgence of cases in Australia and New Zealand, once restrictions were lifted.
“However, lockdowns invariably cause massive collateral damage, devastating economies, inducing mental illness, reducing treatments for serious conditions and interrupting education.”
