A millionaires’ playground, Poole in Dorset boasts some of the most expensive properties in the UK, and has been called Britain’s Palm Beach.

Away from the yachts and the mansions of Sandbanks, however, Poole is also a beer drinkers’ paradise, with 58 pubs in the parliamentary constituency alone.

But now many of Dorset’s pub landlords have joined a bitter backlash against rises in business rates of up to £30,000 in Rachel Reeves’s November budget.

Across the UK, it is claimed up to 1,000 publicans have even banned Labour MPs from their pubs, after the chancellor axed a 40% rates discount, introduced during COVID, from next April.

The row over the rises, brewing since the budget, came to a head in a clash between Kemi Badenoch and Sir Keir Starmer in the final Prime Minister’s Questions of 2025.

“He gave his word that he would help pubs,” said the Tory leader.

“Yet they face a 15% rise in business rates because of his budget. Will he be honest and admit that his taxes are forcing pubs to close?”

The PM replied that the temporary relief introduced during COVID – a scheme the Conservatives put in place and Labour supported, he said – had come to an end.

“But it was always a temporary scheme coming to an end,” he said.

“We have now put in place a £4bn transitional relief.”

But in the Barking Cat Ale House in Poole, facing an increase in business rates of nearly £9,000 a year, the father and son co-landlords fear the rises could mean last orders for many pubs.

“We’re sort of in the average area at 157%, but we’ve got a lot of local pubs that are increasing by 600%, and another one by 800%,” Ambrose senior, Mark, told Sky News.

“It’s a pub destroyer. Pubs can’t survive these kinds of increases. It’s not viable. Most pubs are just about scraping by anyway. If you add these massive increases your profit margins are wiped out.

“We struggle as it is. You can’t have that kind of increase and expect businesses to succeed.

“Fortunately, the customers understand. But they still don’t want to have to spend an extra 30 or 50 pence a pint.”

Son Michael added: “It’s all back to front. It’s really these bigger pub companies and supermarkets that need to be facing increased taxes. We can’t handle them. They can.”

Michelle Smith, landlady of the Poole Arms, the oldest pub on the town’s quay, dating back to 1635, said: “Our rates per value is due to go up £9,000 in April, so it’s quite a deal.”

“And we had a rates increase just gone as well,” she added. “So our rates had already increased over £1,000 a month last April. So another hit is quite considerable really.

“Prices definitely have to go up with all the different price increases that we’ve got throughout: business rates, wage increases, the beer goes up from the breweries. Everything is going up.”

Backing the publicans, Neil Duncan-Jordan, who became Poole’s first ever Labour MP last year, has written to the chancellor demanding a rethink. He said he is prepared to vote against the tax rise in the Commons.

“They’ve got to listen,” he told Sky News.

“They’ve got to listen to the high street, to publicans, people who run social clubs and listen to problems that they’re facing and the impact that these changes have made.”

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Pint price rises to come unless govt make changes

Mr Duncan-Jordan said he was prepared to support an amendment to the Finance Bill, which turns the budget into law and had its second reading in the Commons last week.

Despite being suspended for four months for rebelling against welfare cuts earlier this year, he said: “I was discussing this with some MPs just this morning and I’ll be happy to support those. Sometimes you just have to say what you think is right.”

As chancellor, Ms Reeves has regularly raised a glass to pubs and promised to protect them from rising costs.

But Sir Keir has faced the wrath of a publican before, when he was thrown out of a pub in Bath during COVID by an anti-lockdown landlord.

This time, without a U-turn by the chancellor on the business rates increases, pub landlords fear the government has them over a barrel.

Non-crime hate incidents should be scrapped and replaced with a “common sense” system, police leaders are set to recommend.

The scheme would mean only the most serious incidents are recorded as anti-social behaviour.

The recommendation is part of a review by leaders at the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and College of Policing, which is set to be published next month and given to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood.

Non-crime hate incidents are perceived to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards certain characteristics, such as race or gender, but do not meet the threshold of a criminal offence.

Rather than logging hate incidents on a crime database, the plan would treat them as intelligence reports, with officers given a “common sense” checklist.

The checklist is intended to ensure officers target only serious anti-social behaviour, such as antisemitism, Lord Herbert of South Downs, chairman of the College of Policing, told The Telegraph.

He said that non-crime hate incidents would “go as a concept”, with the system, which dates back to 1999, no longer “fit for purpose”.

Read more from Sky News:
Britons are less well off than in 2019
Reeves’s budget tax rises ‘a pub destroyer’, say landlords

The NPCC review was announced after the Metropolitan Police said in October that it would no longer investigate non-crime hate incidents.

Britain’s biggest police force made the announcement after revealing Father Ted creator Graham Linehan will face no further action after he was arrested at Heathrow Airport on suspicion of inciting violence over three posts he made on X about transgender issues.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has officially undergone a change in leadership, with acting chair Caroline Pham saying she will leave the agency on Monday and Mike Selig being sworn in as chair.

Pham, who had been serving as the CFTC’s acting chair since January and its sole commissioner since August, said on Monday that it would be her last day at the agency.

Meanwhile, the CFTC confirmed that Selig was sworn in as the agency’s 16th chairman on Monday after being nominated for the role by President Donald Trump on Oct. 27 and confirmed by the Senate on Thursday.

Pham’s departure leaves Selig as the CFTC’s sole commissioner. He is widely seen as pro-crypto and previously served as the chief counsel of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Crypto Task Force.

Selig to continue positive momentum in crypto oversight 

Selig will now serve a term that will expire in April 2029, and has previously vowed to support growth in innovative technologies such as crypto and blockchain by avoiding a so-called “regulation by enforcement” approach. 

“I’m grateful for the confidence President Trump has placed in me and for the opportunity to lead the CFTC at this pivotal time,” Selig said.

“We are at a unique moment as a wide range of novel technologies, products, and platforms are emerging, retail participation in the commodity markets is at an all-time high, and Congress is poised to send digital asset market structure legislation to the President’s desk, cementing the US as the Crypto Capital of the World.”

On Monday, White House crypto czar David Sacks said Selig and SEC chair Paul Atkins were a “dream team to define clear regulatory guidelines.”

Pham shifts to crypto after steering CFTC 

Pham has long said she would leave the CFTC once Congress confirmed someone to lead the agency, and on Wednesday, MoonPay confirmed earlier reports that Pham was headed to the crypto fintech company.

Pham’s time as acting chair saw her take a proactive approach to supporting crypto regulation.

Related: Wall Street’s bid on crypto dominated 2025 but what’s the demand outlook for 2026?

Pham said in her departing statement that the CFTC had “refocused on our mandate to promote responsible innovation and fair competition as the CFTC prepares to take on expanded oversight of new markets and new products like digital assets, crypto, and prediction markets.”