Lest politicians forget, smokers are voters too
Monday, April 13, 2015 at 14:38 We've said many times and I'll say it again, smokers are voters too.
The problem is, relatively few people vote for a candidate on the basis of a single issue, especially in a general election. That's why single issue candidates (including former directors of Forest!) invariably lose their deposits.
Anti-smoking policies may annoy and even anger millions of people but they don't affect the outcome of elections. That appears to be the view of strategists like Lynton Crosby and it's hard to disagree with their analysis.
There are several reasons for this. One, smokers are a minority of the population. Two, even smokers (the majority of them anyway) have other priorities – the economy, the NHS, immigration, all the usual issues.
Nevertheless it's not beyond the bounds of possibility to think that smokers (and tolerant non-smokers like myself) could make a difference in a handful of seats up and down the country.
Beginning tomorrow therefore I'm going to feature a series of target seats where the candidate standing for re-election is either an avowed anti-smoking campaigner or has voted consistently in favour of the more extreme tobacco control policies (smoking ban, display ban, plain packaging).
After the election we'll see how many of these anti-smoking candidates have retained their seats.
Sadly the few that do lose their seats will probably be replaced by candidates who are equally anti-smoking, but let's give it a go.
Reader Comments (13)
It could have been the case that votes for UKIP due to its libertarian tobacco policies made a difference in marginal constituencies in the last election. If everyone opposed to the Anti (non pharmaceutical) Nicotine Industry voted UKIP in May, the Conservative and Labour parties would be in trouble.
Tobacco controlling politicians who cover up and plain package cigarettes who expect me to vote for them are stupid and shouldn't be in politics.
Excellent news, Simon. You're right, of course - for many smokers there are more pressing matters than smoking restrictions or the smoking ban. But I think you'd be surprised at how important the issue is for many others. Obviously, those of us who comment on here and elsewhere make no bones about the fact that we feel very strongly about the whole issue (in fact, for me, apart from our membership of the EU, it’s pretty much the only thing that concerns me when looking at a potential MP’s track record – in all other important areas, like the NHS, the economy, etc I think they’re all equally inept and don’t have a clue where to start, so there’s no point in bothering to listen to all their empty promises about those).
But on the basis (as MP’s themselves use as a rule of thumb), that for every person who writes about something, there’s roughly 100 others who feel the same way, but don’t write, there’s probably quite a lot of smokers out there who despise the ban, but simply don’t say so. And quite a few of them probably check in to blogs like yours and would be interested to know if their local PPC is an anti or not.
Sadly, there’s no need for you to tell me about my local MP – she’s an avowed anti and the rumour is that she was quietly asked during her tenure as Junior Health Minister to ease off on the jolly joint photos of her cuddling up to Debs Arnott which were peppering the internet with worrying frequency, because it wasn’t deemed to be a great idea for a supposedly-impartial Minister to be advertising their biased allegiance to a single-issue lobby group so very brazenly. Just a rumour, you understand. Needless to say, she hasn’t got a snowball’s chance in hell that she’ll get my vote next month!
But it’ll certainly make Election Night more interesting for me to have a list of antis-whom-I-hope-will-lose that I can tick or cross off as the results for their constituencies come out. Much more fun than sitting through the whole charade waiting for just one’s own constituency result. I might even invite some friends over (smokers and tolerant non-smokers to a man, all of them) so we can make a bit of a game of it – a bit like some people have Eurovision parties at home, we’ll have an Election night one!
Well done, Simon – you’ve just make the Election a whole lot more interesting than legions of droning MP’s have so far managed to do! Perhaps you could give them some tips ….
Excellent - now that's pro-active so good luck. My vote as a smoker may affect the outcome here and may lose the Tories this seat in favour of Labour but frankly who cares. No difference for us so same difference. I'll wait until 2020 - when the rest of the nation wakes up due to being ignored on whatever single issue matters most to them. Lots of single issues make up a lot of support for parties that listen to all not the few.
My own view is none of the main 3 care about smokers and they know only too well that a trivial issue like smoking, compared to the economy, education, or health, won't be a defining issue for most.
However, we smokers didn't make this trivial issue matter to the point of enforced social exclusion, discrimination, and inequality - all very defining and important issues.
They don't say smoking is a trivial issue when they spend so much public money on it, while making out like they are saving the world. It only becomes "trivial" when people who smoke fight back and demand some rights and legal protection from discrimination - which they've been refused.
We vote on this issue because it's all about autonomy and ownership of our own bodies, minds, and lives. No one owns me and no one has the right to tell me what legal activity I can enjoy or not. No one owns my life.
It's about being treated equally and with respect, it's about freedom, pro-industry (therefore pro-economy) it's about consumer rights, it's about fighting to stop NHS cash being poured into the black hole of zealous ideological campaigns to meet the "Smoke-Free World" of 2025 - even though a substantial majority doesn't want that, preferring instead the ambience, atmosphere and delicious smell of something that's been part of our culture for some 700 years.
It's about honesty, quality education, and educating the young to be tolerant and not grooming them to hate, fear and abuse. It's about being free enough to decide what you like or don't like and being able to make that choice and express it in adulthood in a free and tolerant society.
In fact, it's about everything that matters because without freedom, respect, equality, diversity, tolerance and inclusion, nothing matters at all. Smokers cannot say they have any of those things from parties expecting to get our vote - except one of course - and anyone thinking their lifestyle choice is safe should be wary. They may well be next for the Public Health Hate Campaign.
Here are a few to start you off Misty
http://www.ash.org.uk/about-ash/all-party-parliamentary-group-on-smoking-and-health/about-the-appg
My MP voted against plain packaging but he is a Tory so if I vote for him I vote for Cameron who personally supported it. A different PM, the kind that I could back would have stood up to the socialists and told them were to stick their Orwellian policies.That sort of PM might have persuaded me to vote Conservative.
I do hope that smokers and others who favour of a free society will take the opportunity to vote against overtly healthist candidates standing in their constituencies. It is sadly too much to hope that the statist bullies losing their seats will include David Cameron.
Typical of Forest focussing on the negative. Why not instead try to be positive and support those MPs in marginal seats who consistently support freedom? Here's a few names to start with:
David Nuttall (Bury North), Nigel Mills (Amber Valley), Guto Bebb (Aberconwy), Jacob Rees Mogg (Somerset NE), Jackie Doyle Price (Thurrock), Nick De Bois (Enfield N), Karl McCartney (Lincoln).
We all knew that it was never going to be just about having to nip outside for a cigarette and so it has proved. The ban gave the official seal of approval to the prejudiced and gullible to abuse smokers and to adopt a zero tolerance approach to us. Smokers fear being discriminated against in job recruitment, being evicted from rented property, having to go into hospital where there will be no sympathy whatsoever no matter the stress that a draconian no-smoking policy causes in an already stressful situation. Every activity is coloured by the ban. The psychological damage of being marginalized is awful but, after eight years of it, I have never adapted to it and have no intention, on principle, of doing so. So, as far as I'm concerned it's a huge issue in its own right because of the assumptions that underpin it, its consequences and ramifications. My priority is first and foremost to vote for a party that promises to re-introduce some common sense to the issue; if that party's candidate for my constituency were anti-smoking, I'd still vote for the party in the hope that he or she would be whipped into line. It that party were unavailable in my area, I'd vote for the party that was the least of all evils on the issue and, no matter how sympathetic towards smokers a candidate were, if the party he or she represented promised to pursue the witch hunt, I wouldn't vote for them.
My new Conservative MP voted against David Nuttall's Bill to soften the viciousness of the smoking ban and let me back into society in 2010.
Now for some reason best known to himself he wants me walk about with large and unpleasant pictures of random strangers in my handbag.
I couldn't possibly vote for him this time and considering his obvious contempt for any decisions of mine, he clearly wouldn't want me to.
Borderline, read my next post (written earlier this evening before I read your comment) which I will publish in the morning.
Fair enough, Simon and thanks. I look forward to seeing your next post.
Karl McCartney is a great MP. He voted against plain packaging and he has been supportive of smokers rights. I have defended him many times when he's been attacked by antis and the local Labourites because of that support. I thanked him for all of his help and said, regrettably, that I could not vote for him because to do so would be to say to his Govt that I'll put up with even more attacks on my way of life.
He's a great MP who is let down by his leadership which is not listening to him on this issue. I said that if he should lose his seat then he should cross over to a party that deserves him - and one I could then fully support with him as a candidate rather than one that I vote for because I have no other way of showing this issue matters.
How else can smokers show those making laws against us that we've had enough? A vote is just about our only voice. Other methods tried have just been ignored.
I guess the bottom line is that when an issue – any issue – affects any one voter personally, as the smoking ban has done to many people, then they do tend to become a bit single-issue about it.
Imagine, for example, if a party in power brought in, say, a ban on rambling societies (yes, I know that they’ve recently acquired more rights, not lost any, but this is just a hypothetical). People who didn’t ramble might not be bothered, some landowners might actually welcome it, but ramblers themselves would feel massively hard done by and, over a period of time of not being able to go out and enjoy a hike with their friends as they used to, they’d probably start taking a bit more interest in which MPs voted to spoil their leisure pursuit and scrutinising which ones were most likely to relax things a bit and allow them to start enjoying it a bit more. And they certainly wouldn’t vote for any MP who brayed on about how much nicer the countryside was now that all those “huge crowds of ramblers” were no longer cluttering up the footpaths and getting in everybody else’s way.
I'll bet, for example, that the pro-hunting crowd are very well aware of exactly which MPs voted for the hunting ban and which didn't, whereas I doubt that many people - even those who claim to be bothered about the NHS - know exactly which MP's voted to close their local A&E and which didn't. They might know there was a vote, and even what the result was, but because few of them actually use their A&E department very often, it's just become "another lousy decision by politicians," rather than something which they have taken an active interest in. And as an issue in and of itself, it’s unlikely to sway their vote in any one direction or another.
Other issues, like the NHS, the economy, education and defence etc may in reality be bigger issues, but for most people they are a bit “once removed” – most people’s lives remain pretty much unaffected by them, whoever’s in power. Even if in principle they might think that there are actions that the Government should take to make them all run a bit better, they rarely focus on any one of those as a particular “pet peeve.” That only happens when an issue affects them personally. Like the smoking ban.