FOR political journalists of a certain age it is impossible to read about the imminent closure of the Gay Hussar, due on June 21st, without a flood of nostalgia. The restaurant is a purveyor of memories as much as Hungarian food. The walls are lined with cartoons of leading politicians and journalists. A couple of images on the stairwell capture their subjects perfectly: a cartoon of Michael Foot beaming at his 90th birthday party and a photograph of Gordon Brown storming out after a dinner with editors.

There are all sorts of reasons for the closure. The rise in property prices in Soho is forcing all sorts of landmarks to close. The restaurant is too far from Parliament for MPs to get back in time to vote. The most remarkable thing about the Gay Hussar is that it has survived for so long in a volatile industry. Opened in 1953, it started as a meeting place for Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe, many of them communists, became a favourite of Labour MPs and trade unionists in the 1960s, and then conquered the whole political world in the 1980s. Tory “wets” plotted against Margaret Thatcher there and Tory “bastards” against John Major.

But the restaurant’s imminent death surely has something to do with the decline in political drinking. Few people went to the Gay Hussar for the food. Hungary’s is not one of the world’s great cuisines and the Gay Hussar’s rendering of it was more faithful than inspired. Nor did they go for the comfort. The tables are cramped, particularly upstairs, and the corridors are higgledy-piggledy. They went for the booze—or, more precisely, for the intoxicating mixture of drink and gossip, alcohol and plotting, that once made British politics such a joy.

Drink has certainly not disappeared from public life. The Westminster village is about to embark on a long cycle of summer parties (last July David Lidington, a Tory MP, blamed plots against Theresa May on “too much sun and too much warm prosecco”). The summer season will be followed by the even boozier party conference season. Drink still has the power to change the course of political history. Ed Miliband introduced the current system for electing the Labour leader because a drunken Labour MP, Eric Joyce, assaulted four other fellow drinkers and the party’s attempt to replace him produced fears of vote-rigging by unions. If Mr Joyce hadn’t got so sloshed, Jeremy Corbyn might still be on the backbenches, and Labour might have campaigned much more vigorously for Britain to stay in the European Union.

That said, today’s Westminster looks like a temperance meeting compared with the Westminster of old. Ben Wright’s lovingly researched “Order, Order! The Rise and Fall of Political Drinking” demonstrates that British politics was once sodden with drink from the top downwards. Winston Churchill started on the whisky shortly after breakfast and later added formidable quantities of wine, brandy and his particular favourite, champagne. Ernest Bevin had the same relationship with alcohol as a car has with petrol. Nye Bevan was nicknamed the “Bollinger Bolshevik” and Roy Jenkins “Old Beaujolais”. By contrast, Mr Corbyn is a virtual teetotaller and Mrs May boasted, in her bid for the Tory leadership, that she doesn’t hang around the Commons bars.

Drinking was more than an after-work indulgence. MPs needed to drink in the House of Commons’ numerous bars in order to build up a network of supporters (or to spread poison about their rivals) and to be able to match journalists drink-for-drink in order to burnish their public image. During the glory days of political drinking it was routine for journalists to share a bottle of wine or more with their sources over a long lunch and then stagger back to their offices in order to hit their deadlines. Today lunches are usually short and dry, though still ridiculously expensive.

Why has the great tradition of political drinking gone into decline? The most popular answer—that everybody is too busy these days—is nonsense. Mr Corbyn and Mrs May are no doubt working hard to construct their dubious legacies, but it is difficult to imagine that they work harder than Bevin, who ensured that Britain sided with America in the cold war, or Jenkins, who liberalised the country’s social legislation, let alone Churchill. Political journalists are no doubt also very busy tweeting. But it is hard to think that they are busier than legendary drinkers-cum-workhorses such as Henry Fairlie and Christopher Hitchens.

Used judiciously, alcohol can be a stimulant to the sort of work that makes a difference in politics. It can promote creativity and problem-solving. (William James once said that alcohol “brings its votary from the chill periphery of things to the radiant core”.) It can dissolve hierarchies and create bonds. And it can promote truth-telling—a dangerous thing for politicians, but a wonderful one for journalists and society in general. There are more scoops in a bottle of wine than a bottle of Perrier.

One for the road

The real reasons are more depressing than “pressure of work”. One is that the government is becoming the nation’s nanny. It is impossible to tell ordinary people to limit themselves to 14 units of alcohol a week if you consume 14 units with your lunch every day. Another is that people are increasingly aware that, however good alcohol is as a servant, it is an evil master. Charles Kennedy, a former leader of the Liberal Democrats, is one of several MPs who drank himself to death.

The saddest reason is the rise of a professional political class. Drink provided a link between politics and society. The Labour Party recruited MPs and activists from working men’s clubs that existed in large part to provide workers with cheap drink. Ministers routinely let their guard down when they demolished the ministerial drinks cabinet with their civil servants and advisers. Today, both Labour and the Tories recruit their MPs from think-tanks and ministers keep up their guard at all times. The decline of political drinking has snapped yet another link between the political elite and the people that they are supposed to serve.