Manifesto watch - Labour

As expected, Labour has committed itself to the same creeping prohibition of tobacco as the Tories.

In a section entitled ‘Action on public health’, the party’s manifesto, published this morning, states:

Labour will ensure the next generation can never legally buy cigarettes.

The funny thing is, some people have told me privately that they thought it might have been better if the Tories’ Tobacco and Vapes Bill had been passed while the Conservatives were still in government because under Labour the regulations could be even worse.

We’ll see, but it says a lot about the state of politics in Britain today that both Labour and the Conservatives have included the policy in their manifestos.

Furthermore, we know from recent events that it will be supported by the Lib Dems, SNP, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru so the only question that remains is how quickly does the incoming Labour government want to push this through Parliament.

The number of Conservative MPs who vote against it in the new parliament will also signal the direction the post election parliamentary Tory party is going to take.

My guess is that while the number of Tory MPs will be massively reduced, a great many will be just as paternalistic as their predecessors.

As for Rishi Sunak, I’ve given up second guessing the outgoing prime minister, but what was he thinking when he proposed the generational tobacco ban at the Conservative conference in Manchester last year?

It was, after all, Labour’s Wes Streeting who, in response to New Zealand and the subsequent Khan Review, became the first UK politician to seriously flirt with the idea of a generational tobacco ban.

That was in January 2023 and the Tories could and should have responded by shutting the idea down.

To be fair, that’s what public health minister Neil O’Brien appeared to have done in April last year when he gave the Government’s response to the Khan Review which had advocated a New Zealand style ban in 2022.

As I wrote here:

Parts of his speech may have been lifted from the tobacco control template, but I was impressed by his short but firm answers to the questions that followed.

Gratifyingly he also emphasised the Government’s belief in personal responsibility which, together with freedom of choice, is the principal platform Forest has stood on for over 40 years.

Had Sunak stuck to the line about personal responsibility, mocking Labour’s addiction to the nanny state, he could have portrayed the Tories as the more liberal of the two parties.

It would also have created a clear blue line between the two parties, giving voters a more obvious choice (although he would need to have done it in other areas too).

Instead he chose to adopt a policy first introduced by the Labour Party in New Zealand (later repealed by the new centre-right coalition government) so that it effectively became a race between the Tories and UK Labour to see who would be the first to introduce it in the UK.

In other words, no choice at all.

And that’s the Blair-like legacy Rishi Sunak will leave behind. He must be so proud.