When the Sun wanted a picture of George Osborne holding a pint of beer a couple of years ago, they had to mock one up. Many have searched in vain for the real thing, and come up with nothing. David Cameron has a brewery in his constituency that he helps promote abroad, and the royal family are always pulling pints to show how down they are with their subjects, but there's no photographic evidence that the chancellor has ever actually been in a pub.

But yesterday, Osborne realised that if he wanted his empathy budget to really convince, he must at least stop kicking beer and pubs in the balls. That he not only ended the hated duty escalator for beer while keeping it for other drinks, but also implemented the first cut in beer duty since 1959, shows an almost touching desire to be seen as a man of the people.

Beer has always had massive political importance in Britain. Tuesday's budget and the arguments around it show just how tricky it can be to mess around with a revenue cash cow that also happens to be both an intoxicating drug and a powerful symbol of national identity.

For most of our history, beer has been much more than a drink. It's so full of nutrients that monks used to subsist on it through Lent. It was clean and sterile when water wasn't always, so "small beer" was served even in workhouses and schools.

And beer is simply more sociable than other drinks. Heading to the bar, buying rounds and toasting each other are just some of the ways beer helps dissolve social barriers. That's one reason why pubs provide the backbone of our social history, and remain community hubs today.

So while beer tax has never been popular, our rulers have always assumed that the people will bear it. Henry II introduced the first tax on beer in 1188, and drinkers have paid it – in many varied ways – ever since.

But there's always been more to beer's political importance. When William Hogarth gave us Gin Lane's Daily Mail-style scenes of social disorder in 1751, he also painted Beer Street, an idyll of peaceful prosperity. The message was clear – a beer drinking nation is a happy, healthy nation. When the Prince Regent said "Beer and beef have made us what we are", he was boasting, not complaining.

Some criticised Hogarth as a propagandist for the emerging brewing giants who drove the Industrial Revolution. They had a point: many of the big beer barons became MPs, almost invariably for the Conservatives, and during the 19th century beer became a party political issue.

By the Victorian era the brewing industry was second only to cotton in terms of its contribution to GDP. But a burgeoning temperance movement argued that the cost was too great. Most people disagreed. When the Liberal government lost the 1874 general election after trying to curb pub opening hours, chancellor Gladstone reflected that they had "been borne down on a torrent of gin and beer".

Temperance peaked in the first world war, after Lloyd George famously proclaimed that Britain was at war with Germany, Austria and drink, "and the greatest of these three deadly foes is drink". Beer was watered down, pub hours were slashed and beer duty soared. Lloyd George would have happily introduced outright prohibition, were in not for his advisers pointing out that the banning of vodka in Russia had been a flashpoint for the Bolshevik revolution.

Attitudes changed by the second world war. With bombers attacking the home front, beer and pubs were an essential morale booster. Beer was never rationed, and Churchill personally mandated that every fighting man at the front must receive eight pints a week.

Beer is no longer the immutable staff of life, which is why the duty escalator has helped destroy almost 6,000 pubs since its introduction. There are other ways of spending our leisure time, and despite the alarmist lies of neo-prohibitionists, we are drinking less, and more of us are teetotal.

The pub can no longer survive a tax beating. But even if we don't go to the pub as often as we did, we still want it to be there. It's part of who we are. The pub is more than just a drink shop, and beer is so much more than a mildly intoxicating, flavoursome beverage. It's nice to see Osborne seeming to realise this. If he ever does visit a pub, he might just find himself welcome there.