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Get out of my pub’: Why Keir Starmer was thrown out of a Bath pub
A widely shared video of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer being told to leave a pub in Bath captured a moment that quickly went viral online — sometimes misrepresented as a current protest or about unrelated issues. In fact, the incident dates back to April 19, 2021, when Starmer was then leader of the Labour Party and campaigning ahead of local elections.
What happened — the basic facts
During a campaign visit to the city of Bath, Starmer and his team stopped outside The Raven, a traditional pub in the city centre. Local landlord Rod Humphris came out of the pub, visibly angry, and began shouting at the Labour leader. He repeatedly told Starmer “that man is not allowed in my pub — get out of my pub!” before the politician and his team withdrew.
Security personnel quickly intervened to de-escalate the situation.
Key reason: anger over lockdown policy
The central cause of the incident was frustration over coronavirus lockdown measures. Humphris openly criticised Starmer for what he saw as Labour’s failure to robustly challenge the UK government’s handling of pandemic restrictions.
According to comments made by Humphris after the incident:
• He felt “incandescent” about how lockdowns had affected his business.
• He accused Starmer of failing to hold the government to account over restrictive measures that he believed were unnecessary.
Humphris later said that he believed lockdowns — including compulsory closures for pubs — were over-reaching and that the focus on protecting only older people indicated to him that the wider damage wasn’t justified.
A misunderstanding over the visit
Some reporting suggested there was confusion over whether Starmer was actually welcomed into the pub by its owners. One co-owner later indicated to reporters that Humphris’s views did not reflect the entire business and that miscommunication between the Labour team and pub staff played a part in the heated moment.
Starmer’s response
Starmer later told journalists he disagreed profoundly with the landlord’s views and defended the use of lockdown restrictions as necessary for public health.
The Labour Party press office also described the footage as showing someone “spreading dangerous misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Online misinformation and context
In 2025 and later years, the 2021 clip resurfaced on social media with false claims — including unrelated political or cultural accusations — but fact-checks confirm the original confrontation was purely about COVID-19 policies during the pandemic, not other issues attributed to it online.
Why this story endured
Even years after the event, the clip remains shareable because:
• It’s visually striking — a public figure being forcefully ejected from a pub.
• It speaks to pandemic frustrations felt by some pub owners and the public.
• It has been reused, misused, and re-framed to fit different narratives online, often with inaccurate claims detached from the original context.
In summary: Sir Keir Starmer’s removal from a Bath pub was the result of a heated confrontation in 2021 with a landlord furious about pandemic lockdown policies and what he saw as weak political opposition to those rules. The episode was contextual, specific to that moment, and has occasionally been misrepresented when recirculated online without context.
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