Desperate PM targets smokers

The Guardian today reports that Rishi Sunak is ‘considering introducing some of world’s toughest anti-smoking measures to effectively ban next generation from ever buying cigarettes’.

Measures include a New Zealand style ban on future generations being allowed to buy cigarettes, to be achieved by raising the age of sale by one year every year until no-one can legally purchase tobacco.

Apparently, a ban on smoking in beer gardens and parks is also on the agenda.

Naturally, the Guardian didn’t seek a response from anyone opposed to such policies. Forest has however been quoted by, among others, the Press Association, The Sun, Independent, i, London Evening Standard, Daily Record, STV, and the Financial Times.

According to the FT, ‘Prime minister’s latest effort to tackle falling ratings could trigger party backlash’:

Simon Clark, director of the smokers’ group Forest, said if Sunak decided to introduce these measures “it will be a Conservative government in name only”, taking the “nanny state to another level”.

“Prohibiting the sale of cigarettes to future generations of adults won’t stop people smoking,” he said, “it will simply drive the sale of cigarettes underground and into the hands of criminal gangs.”

I can’t say I’m hugely surprised by this turn of events. In May Sunak was reported to have rejected George Osborne’s call to ban smoking, which we obviously welcomed.

I wasn’t completely convinced, though, and even after the Government opposed an amendment to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill that would have banned smoking in licensed pavement areas, I warned:

I remember all too well when, a few months before the 2015 general election, David Cameron's government suddenly decided to introduce plain packaging, having previously kicked it into the long grass.

Labour and the anti-smoking lobby were pushing hard for plain packaging and it was said that Cameron didn't want it to be an election issue, hence the famous 'barnacles off the boat' strategy.

It wouldn't surprise me if Rishi Sunak adopted a similar tactic ahead of the next election, with the bonus that it would make the Government appear proactive, albeit not in a good way if you believe that government should butt out of our lives as much as possible.

Fingers crossed that won't happen, but I've lost faith in politicians and this Government has performed so many u-turns, what's another one to them?

By guess is that officials in Number Ten are flying a kite to see how the public (and the party) react.

What is clear is that the Conservative Party under its present leadership has no direction, or clear principles.

They are so far behind in the polls (spot the connection?) that Sunak and his advisors are thrashing around and will consider almost anything in a desperate attempt to seize the initiative with headline grabbing initiatives.

(As an aside, it’s interesting that this story was given to the Guardian, not the Telegraph or even The Times.)

The Tories, of course, have always been a party dominated not by libertarians, who represent a very small percentage the membership, nor by authoritarians (who are also a relatively small group within the party), but by paternalists.

Traditionally however Conservatives have also been pragmatic (none more so than Mrs Thatcher) but the sort of anti-smoking measures currently being considered go way beyond pragmatism. They smell, quite simply, of desperation.

Worse, targeting an ever decreasing minority of the population, like smokers, smacks of bullying. Ironically, given that most smokers are from lower socio-economic backgrounds, there’s also a hint of class warfare, the ‘comfortable’ middle class dictating how the poorer working class should live their lives.

It’s worth pointing out too that no-one has actually voted for these policies. At the very least, therefore, Sunak should have the guts to include them in the party’s election manifesto next year.

Unfortunately, there’s every chance that, in the race to outdo one another, Labour might strive to go even further, although it’s hard to see how they could, beyond a ban on the sale of cigarettes to all age groups (as requested by Philip Morris, funnily enough).

Anyway, by coincidence (and with great foresight!), Forest is hosting a panel discussion at the Conservative party conference on Monday 2nd October entitled ‘Smoking Gun: The infantilisation of Britain’.

More on this next week.

See: Rishi Sunak considers banning cigarettes for next generation (Guardian)

Update: I discussed this story on LBC on Saturday. Also on the programme: Hazel Cheeseman, deputy CEO of ASH.

Comments

[Misty]

Once again, I remain astonished that no-one either currently or previously involved within our legal system has not raised so much as a peep of concern at this proposal. It is deeply, deeply worrying – and not just for smokers, either.

If one accepts that the whole purpose of the entire UK legal system is to try and ensure fairness in what is undoubtedly an unfair world, then there can be no-one with a functioning brain who could possibly disagree that it is impossible for any legal system to hope to achieve this unless the law applies equally to everyone. Putting aside the old adage of “one rule for the rich and one rule for the poor,” which in fact relates to the practical application of the law, rather than a founding principle (and is a matter for an altogether different discussion at another time!), in principle the law as it has stood for many centuries in this country is applicable equally to everyone. If person X punches person Y on the nose, they have committed a crime. If person X steals person Y’s wallet, they have committed a crime. Similarly, everyone has to wait until they are 18 before they can be sold alcohol. Everyone has to wait until they are 17 before they can learn to drive a car. Everyone has to wait until they are 16 before they can join the military. And all of that is fair – because it applies to everyone, from the heir to the throne right down to the homeless guy on the street corner.

Some people may agree or disagree about what are the “right” ages to be allowed to do stuff, but that’s just the details - and, indeed, the actual cited ages have been varied over the years, as we all know only too well. But never has a law been enacted which effectively debars just one group of people from ever being granted a right which has hitherto been granted to everyone else. It’s irrelevant whether they choose to exercise those rights or not, what’s important is that everyone should be treated the same under the law and everyone should be granted the same rights at the same age as everyone else was. Effectively, this proposal is nothing short of age discrimination – something which is itself, ironically, against the law! Never has anyone, whether politician, judge, barrister, Chair of the Law Society, or even any of the swivel-eyed single-issue campaign groups – ever suggested that this primary, most vital, founding principle be broken. Until now.

This proposal changes all that and hints at a worrying change of attitudes from our current leaders as to what the basic purpose of even having legal system is. With such damage to one of its most vital principles, its purpose (as they see it) can surely no longer be to try and ensure fairness because it simply isn’t possible to ensure fairness when one group of people are singled out in such a way – take a look at some of the other, much more partisan or religiously-based law systems to see how justice and fairness categorically fail to materialise when different rules are applied to different groups living within the same society. Social control and enforced behaviour might, but not justice or fairness. So what does this breathtakingly arrogant interference with the mechanics which enable UK law to fulfil its basic raison d’etre actually say? Maybe that, for politicians – those whom we elect, supposedly to represent us [snort!] - it is now just a useful “henchman” to be used by them to get their own way when it isn’t given voluntarily? Is that really what we want the function of our legal system to be? Really? Because that’s the way it’ll go if we tolerate this.

Like so many of the other precedent-setting trends that the anti-smoking movement has been a handy conduit to put in motion, this won’t stop here, as we know. Can anyone possibly believe, for instance, that, if tolerated, the Greens, the anti-obesity crew and the anti-alcohol brigade, to name but a few obvious ones, won’t spot a golden opportunity to jump on the bandwagon – following the tobacco template in the same incremental steps towards their own much-cherished, utopian “car-free,” “obesity free” or “dry” UK? All, of course – as with this anti-smoking proposal – hidden carefully behind that old stalwart “for the good of our children?”

And the long-term question will, of course, remain that, if the legal system is no longer to be used to ensure fairness and to protect our hard fought-for human rights – including against State threats to those rights - because its main function has become to sledgehammer the people into compliance and obedience to the Government’s current wishes, then who will? Because, as outlined above, the sad fact is that it simply won’t be able to do both. It just isn’t possible, even for our well-established legal system, to apply fairness and justice as much as possible when the very people who have wrested control of what they can and can’t do are themselves totally disinterested in the concept of true fairness, justice or individual rights.

This proposal sets such a dangerous precedent - and, as I said at the start, not just for smokers. So ... where are all the lawyers who should be pointing this out?