Fine words and podcasts butter no parsnips

I am grateful to every journalist, writer, and podcaster who has criticised and even poured scorn on Rishi Sunak's plan to ban the sale of cigarettes to future generations.

From The Spectator to the Telegraph via CapX and Spiked, the more liberal political commentariat has been in fine voice.

The best article, in my opinion, was Melanie McDonagh's brutal evisceration of Sunak in The Spectator (There’s nothing conservative about Sunak’s smoking ban) in which she described the PM as a 'Californian banker ... with no obvious tastes or habits that mark him out as a Tory'.

I suspect though that most commentators will quickly move on and their well-honed articles will, in the words of Bob Mortimer, soon be distant memories, like "fingerprints on an abandoned handrail".

As for podcasts, where do I start? The overwhelming majority are even more ephemeral, leaving almost no trace of their existence.

Last Orders, a Spiked podcast, is better than most but the choice of guests invited to discuss the nanny state has often left me perplexed and even a little miffed because after 70+ episodes, many of which have featured discussions about smoking, I have not once been asked to take part.

(I'm not sure why. No-one will give me an answer.)

Anyway, following Forest's hugely topical event at the Conservative conference in Manchester on Monday, I was momentarily led to believe that might be about to change.

But no. This week's guest to discuss smoking was journalist and former MEP Patrick O'Flynn who, to the best of my knowledge, has rarely if ever written or talked about the subject.

So what did he have to say?

Recorded on Tuesday, the day before Sunak's speech when it was already clear to everyone at conference that the PM was about to announce an incremental ban on the sale of cigarettes to future generations, Patrick declared:

"I would be surprised if Sunak goes ahead with this sort of ratchet mechanism because … the war on cigarettes has kind of been won.”

He later doubled down:

“I would be very surprised if this ultra hardline ratchet cigarette ban comes in because it does seem to me full of ludicrous problems.”

Admitting he had never smoked or vaped, he also confessed, "I can't say I have massively strong skin in the game".

Full marks for honesty but it begs the question: why was Patrick invited – in this of all weeks – to share his thoughts on a subject he clearly doesn't feel strongly about?

In my view, speaking as a campaigner rather than a commentator, this is no time for cosy, fireside chats.

Nor is it time to throw in the towel, as Last Orders presenter (and Spiked editor) Tom Slater effectively did here:

Rishi Sunak’s cigarette ban marks the final, depressing triumph of the nags and the killjoys ... England will never be the same.

Yes, the situation is grim and will almost certainly get worse as alcohol and 'unhealthy' food are targeted like tobacco, but dreary defeatism won't help and some of us have no intention of giving up without a fight.

Our ability to mount a counter-offensive will ultimately depend on the resources available to us but, whatever they are, this is a time for action, not light-hearted conversations about serious issues that are forgotten within minutes.

Put simply, fine words and podcasts butter no parsnips. Are you with me?

Update: Another great piece by Melanie McDonagh, in the Telegraph this time - Smoking David Hockney is a truer conservative than killjoy Rishi Sunak.

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

To be honest, I sort of feel the same when talking about smoking and specifically child smoking. As a historic child smoker, I would have a lot to add and a lot to say about it based on experience and not computer modelling or propaganda press release.

However, as some anti smoker once said to me - "you can't expect government to listen to someone like you who started smoking as a child for God's sake. That would be stupid."

Those of us who actually do know what we are talking about always get shoved out of debate and decision making in favour of those who take the agenda line or who are on the ball and get that abusing, insulting, degrading or humiliating smokers is bang on trend.

"Smokers" are no longer treated as human beings and we are the only group denied the human right to have a private life or be left alone without harassment, abuse and now criminalisation. Anyone who thinks this is just about those born after 2009 clearly has not been following this issue for the last 50 years or more like I have. I have bloody lived it - again, lived experience is so valuable these days unless you are stripped of rights to make targeting you for hatred and exclusion easier.

Why would anyone care what the target of stigmatisation and criminalisation has to say about anything that will effect them far more than the newsworthy, largely middle class, gobs who can shout loudest.

I will keep on fighting until I die or get jailed for being a smoker and condemned to one of their Spice drug and moonshine infested prisons which boast about how they are now "smoke-free". If it wasn't so dangerous, it would be laughable.

[Misty]

It may surprise just a few readers on here to know (as I have written previously at boring length - sorry, Simon!) that my personal concerns about this proposal are not in fact directly towards my rights as a smoker but are more towards the dangerous precedent it sets from the perspective of the foundations of the UK’s whole legal system. But I won’t bore everyone with that again. Much though I agree with everything that you, Simon, and Pat have said about the unfairness and the pitfalls of this new proposal, I do see a few teeny-tiny chinks of light in its wake. Firstly, the fact that quite a few libertarian-based organisations have managed to find anyone apart from your good self, Simon, for comment is, I think, a positive sign, so don’t take it personally! Since 2007 there has been pretty much no-one apart from yourself who would dare to raise even the very top of their head above the parapet to speak out on behalf of the much-beleaguered smoking community. Now it seems that a few have finally mustered up the courage to do so. I’ve even heard one or two of those types in the MSM who usually proudly proclaim that they are “a true libertarian except …” etc etc, that they are concerned about the dangerously nannying indications of this latest proposal.

I don’t know why this is – maybe the imposition of anti-smoking style restrictions/punishment/accusations during the pandemic that gave them a taste of what it was like to be targeted by the State for not obeying its dictats to the letter; maybe the speed and extent of those restrictions was a salutary lesson to them of how much power the Government of the day actually has to withdraw, unchallenged, perfectly normal, legal rights from whoever they please; maybe the hitherto much warned-of (but largely brushed aside) slippery slope is now getting dangerously close to other indulgences which help to make their lives more pleasant and they’ve realised that “if they tolerate this ….” as the song goes, so they think that perhaps its in their own interest to keep Public Health’s hands firmly tied up with smokers to keep them at bay, and that they need to lend their non-smoking support to smokers to ensure that this remains the case. Or maybe they’ve just come to realise that as smokers have withdrawn further and further away from their company (as many of us have), that they plain and simple miss us!

But whatever the reason, I do think that the tide is very slowly turning. It may be a case of “too little, too late,” and some of the new supporters may be more motivated by self-interest, rather than smokers’ rights, but at least now slightly fewer people seem to be as 100% on-side with anti-smoker sentiments than they used to be. Which is at start, albeit a hesitant one.

It also may have escaped your notice that when he announced this policy, Sunak did in fact say words to the effect of “I don’t intend to impose any further restrictions upon those people who already smoke,” which, again, isn’t something that any politician would have even dared to say in years gone by. Yeah, I know about what politicians say and what politicians do being very different, and I certainly wouldn’t take it as genuine reassurance until a fair few years with no further restrictions have passed but, as I say – at least this time a Prime Minister has felt it safe to allude to the fact that, yes, some grown-ups do smoke, and that maybe – just maybe – they’ve already had enough of a kicking. And although it seems like one little throwaway line, politically speaking it’s a sign of a real shift in attitudes as to what can or cannot be said about smokers.