Busy week. I have a lot more to say but a quick update.
Following Forest’s very topical fringe meeting (Smoking Gun: The infantilisation of Britain) at the Conservative conference in Manchester, the prime minister announced that the Government is to introduce an incremental rise in the age of sale of tobacco to stop future generations of adults buying cigarettes legally.
Amusingly (or not) I had barely returned home - having left conference before Sunak’s speech - when I got a call asking me to return to Manchester/Salford to do the BBC1 Breakfast programme on Thursday morning. (I arrived at 2.00am and was on air at 7.10 after a short night’s sleep in a nearby hotel.)
The other amusing thing was my interview with Jeremy Kyle on TalkTV. I was doing it from my Media City hotel room when the smoke alarm went off, live on air!
Anyway, here’s a list of interviews I did and a (non-comprehensive) list of online reports that included Forest’s response. I had to turn down several other interviews (including GB News) because timings clashed:
BBC Breakfast (BBC1)
BBC Radio Five Live phone-in with Nicky Campbell
BBC Radio Kent
BBC Radio Manchester
BBC Radio London
BBC Radio Ulster
BBC Radio Scotland
Channel 5 News
TalkTV with Jeremy Kyle
TalkTV with Vanessa Feltz
Times Radio
Sky News Radio
Online reports that featured a comment from Forest included:
BBC News, ITV News, Sky News, MailOnline, Daily Express, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, Independent, The Sun, Daily Record, Press Association , Wales Online, Perspective Magazine, Reason Magazine, Washington Examiner and many more.
The pushback from multiple groups and commentators has been encouraging (we’re not alone!) but I must mention ‘There’s nothing conservative about Sunak’s smoking ban’ by Melanie McDonagh in The Spectator. McDonagh absolutely nails Rishi Sunak as an archetypal ‘Californian banker’ and the ‘most two-dimensional PM ever, with no obvious tastes or habits that mark him out as a Tory’.
I’m not saying we will stop this absurd, illiberal policy - although it ought to concern anyone who believes in freedom of choice and personal responsibility - but with proper (and I mean proper) resources we’ll at least go down fighting. I love a challenge and this ain’t over.
More to follow …
