The joy of canvassing

‘Canvassing all morning and afternoon. Our vote is holding up.’

So writes a Conservative candidate of my acquaintance.

I wish him well but, in my experience, canvassing - which includes knocking on doors and asking people how they intend to vote - is an extremely inaccurate reflection of voters’ intentions.

For example, during the 1983 General Election I went canvassing on behalf of someone who was standing as the Conservative candidate in Ealing Southall.

Come election day he was convinced, based on canvassing returns, that he was level pegging with his Labour rival who had won the seat in 1979 with a majority of 10,000.

Taking into account the national polls, which predicted a Tory landslide, he was convinced he had every chance of winning.

In my experience however most people who bother to answer the door when canvassers appear are generally polite and many won’t declare their voting intention if they plan to vote for another party.

Often, those who say they will vote for your candidate do so not because they are going to but because they don’t want to get into a debate on their doorstep, and it’s the quickest way of getting rid of you (in the nicest possible way) without being rude (ie declaring for another candidate).

Either way, canvassing returns often provide candidates with an unreasonable expectation of success and should be treated with extreme caution.

As it happens, Ealing Southall was an unusual constituency (at that time) because there was a large Asian community and the sitting Labour MP was understood to spend his summer holidays in India, a move that proved popular with many of his constituents.

Anyway, the eventual outcome was a massive disappointment for my Tory friend because Labour doubled their majority in what was one of the very few seats in England where the vote swung from Conservative to Labour rather than the other way round.

Today, if a Conservative candidate tells you, based on canvassing, that “Our vote is holding up”, I would nod sagely but say nothing. Let them dream.

That said (and I may be wrong), I believe there may be a higher than expected turnout of ‘shy Tories’ who - appalled though they are by the state of the Conservative Party and Rishi Sunak’s government - are nevertheless (like me) reluctant to vote for anyone else.

Labour will still win by a landslide but my guess is that the Tory vote will hold up better than expected.

The problem is, a great many seats will be lost to Labour (and some to the Lib Dems) because of people voting for Reform who will split the Tory vote without winning more than a handful of seats themselves.

Of course, even with ‘shy Tories’ going to the polls, Thursday night is going to be brutal. And let’s be clear.

The responsibility for the unfolding disaster lies almost entirely with the parliamentary Conservative Party and Rishi Sunak’s insipid government, so reap what you sow and all that.

‘Safe’ Tory seat of Huntingdon predicted to go red

According to an election predictor app on the Telegraph website, the Conservatives are set to lose Huntingdon, the constituency in which I live, to Labour.

To be fair, there have been boundary changes so this is technically a new constituency, but for decades Huntingdon was one of the safest Tory seats in the country.

To lose a seat previously held by John Major (who even in 1997 had a majority of 18,140) and, more recently, Jonathan Djanogly (whose 2019 majority was 19,383), would be remarkable.

As it happens the new Conservative candidate, Ben Obese-Jecty, seems a decent guy well suited to Parliament.

A former British army officer, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, he’s also worked in the private sector and is a former Conservative association chairman, which suggests a commitment to the party noticeably lacking in some former MPs.

Meanwhile his Labour opponent looks young enough to be his daughter. OK, that’s an exaggeration (and probably ageist!) but I think it highlights a problem we’re going to have in the new Parliament.

There are going to be hundreds of MPs who, I suspect, never expected to win their seats when they were selected as candidates.

A few (including the Labour PPC for Huntingdon) may rise to the challenge of their new job, but many more are going to be hopelessly out of their depth, and the repercussions for Parliament, local constituencies, and the country at large could be enormous.

Personally, I’m still torn on whether or not to vote at all, and I’ve never ever felt like that ahead of a general election.

Although I don’t want to reward the Conservatives or Rishi Sunak with my vote, I can’t bring myself to vote for anyone else so it’s difficult.

I toyed with the idea of voting for Reform but I just can’t do it, and a major factor was a convincing article by Annunziata Rees-Mogg, a former Brexit Party MEP.

Based on first hand experience of Farage and Richard Tice, she shares her thoughts on Reform and uniting the right after the election. (Good luck with that!)

Do read it if you can - Why I’m backing the Tories over Reform (The Spectator).

PS. Interestingly, as you can see below, the Telegraph app is predicting that Reform will come third in Huntingdon, thereby splitting the Conservative vote and handing the seat to Labour.

How often will that scenario play out on Thursday?

Update: The Conservatives held Huntingdon, albeit with a much reduced majority (1,499, down from 19,383).

The Lib Dem vote fell from 9,432 to 4,821, which suggests some tactical voting although the votes didn’t all go to Labour which only increased its vote by 3,755.

Reform attracted 8,039 votes and came third - almost but not quite enough to unseat the Tories.

What is clear is that, in this previously safe Conservative seat, the local party is going to have to work much harder to retain or regain support.

Although my village is overwhelmingly Conservative (or conservative), judging by newspaper sales in the local shop, I can’t remember the last time a Tory candidate canvassed the area, even though the previous (Conservative) MP lives just around the corner.

If you take people’s support for granted it will eventually come back and bite you.

Update: The Conservative candidate Ben Obese-Jecty won the seat with 18,257 votes, a slim majority of 1,499 compared to 19,383 in 2019.

Labour came second with 16,758 votes, and Reform was third with 8,039.

The fearless face of health journalism

The Guardian today features an ‘investigation’ into alleged lobbying by tobacco companies opposed to the generational tobacco ban.

The report is credited to two journalists, Rob Davies and Matthew Chapman.

Davies is a business reporter at the Guardian. Over the years he has occasionally asked Forest for a quote in response to some smoking-related story.

This is unusual for a Guardian journalist writing about tobacco so I’ve always respected him for that.

Chapman is a senior reporter at The Examination which was launched last year and describes itself as an ‘independent nonprofit newsroom that investigates preventable health threats and empowers people in harm’s way’.

Also, ‘Fearless journalism for a healthier world’.

Previously Chapman worked at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism where he spent three years ‘investigating Big Tobacco’.

Funnily enough, one of his recent reports (which I wrote about here) targeted Deborah Arnott, CEO of ASH, and her former head of research Martin Dockrell.

Dockrell is better known today as the tobacco control programme lead at the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (formerly Public Health England) and in a piece published in March, ‘in collaboration with The Times’, it was reported that:

Martin Dockrell, England’s tobacco control programme lead, had a private dinner with Juul co-founder Adam Bowen and two other company representatives at a nicotine conference in Warsaw, Poland, in June 2017 — a time when Juul products were driving a youth vaping epidemic in the US …

News of the dinner, which was also attended by Deborah Arnott, CEO of Britain’s leading anti-smoking charity Action Against Smoking and Health, has been revealed by The Examination and the Times at a time when Dockrell just shaped a new bill on vaping that was introduced to the British Parliament on Wednesday this week. 

Amusing though it was to see Arnott and Dockrell singled out for the same righteous indignation that ASH frequently reserves for Forest and the tobacco industry, the story - Civil servant in charge of vaping policy advised e-cigarette giant - seemed rather weak to me, which brings me to today’s report, of which there are three versions.

The longest and most detailed (credited solely to Chapman) is on The Examination website - Revealed: Big Tobacco’s campaign to undermine UK generational smoking ban.

Abridged versions can be found on the Guardian website (Revealed: how Sunak dropped smoking ban amid lobbying from tobacco firms) and in the print edition where it appears on page 53, so not exactly front page news.

I do however want to take issue with the inference that the ‘smoking ban’ (sic) was dropped because of lobbying and/or legal threats by the tobacco industry.

When Rishi Sunak called an early general election last month the Tobacco and Vapes Bill was still awaiting its third reading in the House of Commons and had yet to be considered by the House of Lords.

Yes, there had been a degree of perfectly legitimate lobbying by equally legitimate stakeholders opposed to a generational ban, but the reason the Bill was dropped is more prosaic.

Other bills were far more advanced so it would have been unusual, and controversial, to prioritise legislation that was still at a relatively early stage of its passage through Parliament.

On closer examination therefore only one person is responsible for the generational ban being dropped and that’s Rishi Sunak who called a snap election, but that would spoil the narrative about tobacco industry lobbying.

It also ignores the industrial scale of lobbying conducted by the anti-smoking industry that far outweighs anything the tobacco lobby might have been doing.

I should add that Forest is mentioned in the Examination/Guardian report and I’m pleased because it’s always nice when our work is recognised!

I’m curious though how The Examination knew the names of the two MPs - Alexander Stafford and Andrew Rosindell - who attended our ‘Beat the Ban’ lunch at Boisdale on May 21, the day before Sunak announced the date of the election.

It wasn’t a secret that MPs were present (I mentioned it here) but apart from Sir Philip Davies, who was a late withdrawal, we didn’t name any other MPs.

Furthermore, while Stafford was on the guest list and the table plan, Rosindell was a late, unexpected arrival and wasn’t on either. There are two explanations I can think of.

One, another guest leaked the information.

Two, and this is probably more likely, Chapman simply used his initiative and examined the gallery of photos that we made public and spotted the two MPs.

Either way, hat’s off to The Examination for some impressive sleuthing!

The good news is that both of the online reports feature the illustration of Sunak dressed as a nanny pushing an adult in a pram.

Commissioned by Forest for our campaign against the generational ban, I’m delighted it has received further exposure because I’ve always thought a good illustration is worth a thousand words.

My only regret is that it wasn’t reproduced in the Guardian’s print edition as well!

Update: According to ASH Daily News (July 1, 2024):

The title of the [Guardian] article has been changed from 'Revealed: how Sunak dropped smoking ban amid lobbying from tobacco firms' to 'Revealed: tobacco firms lobbied against smoking ban'. The Tobacco and Vapes Bill was unable to be passed into law before the general election as it had not progressed far enough through the legislative process.

This is essentially what I wrote above, two days ago, so it's nice to see my analysis confirmed by ASH, of all people.

However, I've clicked on the link to the Guardian report and the title still reads 'Revealed: how Sunak dropped smoking ban amid lobbying from tobacco firms' so perhaps it's taking a while to update.

PS. Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting was among those who reacted to the Guardian report by posting a response on X.

At the time of writing (on Saturday) Streeting’s comment had been reposted by 295 people, including Matthew Chapman.

Man behind Tory Tartan Chicken embraces Reform

One week to election day and it can’t come quickly enough. End this torture now!

When I get a moment I may post a list of some of the candidates I'd like to see win, or lose.

In the meantime, good luck to my great friend Gary Ling (above) who is standing in Watford on behalf of Reform UK.

I’ve known Gary since we were at Aberdeen University in the late Seventies, and I could write a book about all the things we've done together, including countless holidays with our wives.

In 1986 I attended his passing out parade at Sandhurst following which he spent three years as a captain in the army, much of it in Northern Ireland.

As I explained ten years ago (Another Tory defects to Ukip and this time it’s personal), one of the reasons Gary joined the army was to improve his chances of becoming a Conservative MP.

It must have helped a bit because he got on the candidates' list and fought the 1992 General Election as the Tory candidate in the safe Labour seat of Eccles in Greater Manchester.

Thereafter he came agonisingly close several times to being selected to fight a safe Conservative seat, and I do think he would have been an asset to the party (his wife Helen even more so!).

I do however wonder whether the day to day grind of being a constituency MP would have suited him because Gary is at his best, in my view, when he’s a disruptor.

I remember, for example, when he was assigned to work for the Scottish Conservatives during the 1997 general election campaign.

Tony Blair was due to visit Edinburgh and Gary was given the task of employing what was arguably the party's only weapon in that desperate campaign.

Renamed the Tory Tartan Chicken, he described what happened next here.

Since then Gary's political career has embraced not just the Tories (for whom he was a local councillor in Watford) but Ukip, the Brexit Party, and now Reform.

We don’t agree on everything but I do know that if I lived in Watford he would get my vote, not because of his political affiliation (I remain sceptical about Reform) but because I know him well enough to know that he would put his heart and soul into the job.

He would also remain utterly committed to his long-held beliefs in sovereignty, free enterprise, and personal liberty.

Like me, Gary is still a Thatcherite at heart. The difference is, he’s found a new political home whereas I don’t like or trust any of them!

See: Class of 97 - Tony Blair and the Tory Tartan Chicken

Update: YouGov polling predicts 'likely' Labour win in Watford (Watford Observer).

Boisdale turns 35

Boisdale celebrates its 35th birthday today.

To mark the occasion, 200 guests have been invited to a special lunch at Boisdale of Canary Wharf which was a relatively late addition to the Boisdale group.

At one point there were four Boisdale restaurants in London plus a pub (a former 12th century coaching inn) in Wiltshire.

The first restaurant was opened in Belgravia in 1989 by managing director Ranald Macdonald, the elder son of the 24th Chief of Clanranald.

Located in a Georgian townhouse, it was originally half its current size but was later extended into the property next door, hence the two doors at the front of the building.

Boisdale of Bishopsgate (near Liverpool Street) came next, followed by Canary Wharf (2011) and Mayfair (2014).

The Bishopsgate and Mayfair restaurants have since closed and the pub in Wiltshire is now owned by the Young’s pub chain.

Nevertheless the ongoing appeal of the Belgravia and Canary Wharf restaurants (the latter has developed into an important music venue) suggests there is plenty of life in the Boisdale brand, even if Ranald’s ambition to open a restaurant in Washington DC remains unfulfilled.

I can't attend today's lunch but I would nevertheless like to pay tribute to both Boisdale and Ranald who I first met 20 years ago.

I had heard of Boisdale (the Belgravia restaurant was half a mile from Forest's old office in Palace Street) but I had never been there.

However, after reading a comment by Ranald in the London Evening Standard opposing calls to ban smoking in restaurants and bars, I wrote to him, inviting him to support our campaign against a workplace smoking ban.

Dear reader, he didn't reply.

Undeterred, I contacted him again a few weeks later and this time he invited me to lunch and the rest, as they say, is history.

Ever since that first meeting Ranald has been a wonderful friend and supporter and Boisdale has hosted numerous Forest events including small private dinners, large gala dinners, and parties for up to 300 guests.

We marked Forest’s 30th and 35th anniversaries with events at Boisdale of Belgravia, and our 40th anniversary was celebrated with a gala dinner for 200 people at Canary Wharf.

We’ve also co-hosted two major events off site, as it were.

In September 2006 we joined forces for a Prohibition themed reception for 300+ delegates at the Conservative Party Conference in Bournemouth.

And in June 2007, five days before the introduction of the smoking ban in England, we organised what is still arguably our most ambitious and successful event, a smoker-friendly dinner for almost 400 people at The Savoy hotel in London.

Both events featured live music by the Boisdale Jazz Band, who also played on a 20-track CD, Songs for Swinging Smokers, that was recorded and released as part of our campaign against the smoking ban.

But the memory that will outlive most others is the sight of Ranald being led off stage, in handcuffs, at our event in Bournemouth following his ‘arrest’ for “inciting people to enjoy themselves”.

The fact that 300 people were happily singing ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ merely added to the surreal nature of the moment.

In short, it’s been a fabulous partnership with lots of laughs, and a working relationship that I’m very, very proud of.

Here’s to the next 35 years!

Above: Ranald Macdonald (centre) at the Forest Freedom Dinner at Boisdale of Canary Wharf in 2012; below: one of several innovative ideas Boisdale implemented during Covid to help cashflow.

Pub bore

The Morning Advertiser has announced the finalists for this year’s Great British Pub Awards.

I always take an interest because I was on the judging panel for three years (2011-2013) and in 2013 I even presented one of the awards at the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane.

I was a late stand-in after the junior government minister who had agreed to present the award for Best Outdoor Smoking Area mysteriously pulled out.

His office didn’t give a reason but it must have had something to do with the category - which was sponsored by JTI and the Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign - because they asked if he could present one of the other awards instead.

Er, no.

This year there are 15 categories including Best Beer Pub, Best Country Pub, Best Pub for Entertainment, and Best Pub for Food.

There’s also a Best Pub for Dogs award but not a Best Pub for Smokers, unless you count Best Pub Garden which is not quite the same because these days many beer gardens have introduced restrictions on smoking, and smokers.

Truth is, even when we sponsored the Best Outdoor Smoking Area it was noticeable that some landlords were unhappy to the point of being abusive if they were nominated in case they became known as a smokers’ pub.

That, and the cost of sponsorship, was one reason the category was quietly dropped, but the Save Our Pubs & Pubs campaign was also drawing to a close as our attention turned to plain packaging.

Also, we didn’t have the resources to campaign on two fronts at the same time and without the support of the pub industry - which was always lukewarm about fighting the smoking ban - there was little or no prospect of even amending the legislation.

Nor did we get even a hint of encouragement from the Conservative-led Coalition government, which is why I was trifle bemused to read this report last week:

Tories pledge focus on pubs and clubs in 'first 100 days' (BBC News)

Let’s be clear. The Tories had the opportunity, in 2010, to focus on pubs and clubs by amending the smoking ban that had been introduced by the previous Labour government.

Instead, and despite a brave attempt by David Nuttall MP, the Conservative-led Coalition - aided and abetted by a substantial number of Tory MPs - rejected Nuttall’s fair and reasonable private bill that would have put some element of choice back into the hands of Britain’s hard-pressed publicans.

Conservative-wise, the rot therefore started with David Cameron (whose government then introduced plain packaging), continued under Theresa May (who set 2030 as the target for England to be ‘smoke free’), and reached its natural conclusion with Rishi Sunak pledging to introduce a generational ban on the sale of tobacco.

With that in mind, why would anyone now take seriously the Tories’ desperate pledge to focus on Britain’s pubs and clubs, unless the plan is to turn them all into health clubs?

As for the 2024 Great British Pub Awards, the thing that stands out for me is not only the absence of a Best Outdoor Smoking Area award, but the lack of recognition for Best Urban Pub or Best Pub That Doesn’t Serve Food - in other words, the type of pub that used to be popular with smokers but is rapidly being consigned to history.

Don’t get me wrong, I like a good gastro pub as much as anyone. Nevertheless, the speed with which Britain’s traditional boozers are closing would appear to have as much to do with social engineering as it does with changing trends.

The Great British Pub Awards therefore represent a useful barometer of where the nation is heading, and I can’t say I like it.

On this day … 15 years ago

On this day 15 years ago we celebrated Forest’s 30th anniversary with a party at Boisdale of Belgravia.

In addition to that milestone the event also marked the publication of a new book, Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Anti-smoking, by a young writer called Christopher Snowdon who signed copies and gave a short speech.

Guests, as I wrote here, included actress Lorraine Chase who starred in Emmerdale but is arguably best known for appearing in a series of Campari ads when she was a model in the Seventies.

I think she was the friend of a guest but she clearly supported the cause. Interviewed for the official video of the event, she gave us this soundbite:

“We have a choice. I’m not an idiot. I can think for myself, and the more you take my thinking away from me, that’s dangerous. That’s dangerous.”

The video below, however, was shot and edited by Peter Snowdon, Chris’s father, who also filmed his son’s speech.

As it happens, a few weeks before Velvet Glove Iron Fist was published I wrote:

I can't speak highly enough of this extraordinary labour of love. I've read many books on smoking and this is the best by far. It's a superb read. To use that old cliche, it's a page-turner, which is some achievement. It's packed with information but it's also very readable - serious yet hugely entertaining.

Better still, this is no fire-breathing polemic. The amount of research that has gone into it is staggering. And the tone is moderate throughout which is important because it will appeal to a far wider readership.

Fifteen years on the history of anti-smoking now includes display bans, plain packaging and, most recently, the threat of a generational tobacco sales ban.

Time perhaps for a new, updated, edition?

Burning issue

Just back from Ireland.

Business concluded, I managed to squeeze in a visit to my old schoolfriend Bill who lives near Greystones in Co Wicklow, just south of Dublin.

I’ve known Bill since 1969 when my family moved to Scotland. We were briefly at Wormit Primary School together, before we moved on to Madras College in St Andrews.

During those teenage years we spent our summer holidays camping locally and then further afield in places like Pitlochry where I experienced my first (awful) hangover following a long night drinking Newcastle Brown Ale.

In 1975 we went hiking in the Lake District, and the following year we spent a fairly miserable ten days cycling around central Scotland in the pouring rain, desperately seeking refuge in a variety of youth hostels.

After studying law at Edinburgh University, Bill embarked on a hugely successful career in corporate law that eventually took him to the Cayman Islands via Hong Kong and, if I remember, Bermuda.

In Australia, en route to the Caymans, he met Patty, who is Irish, and it all worked out rather well because, a few months after they got married, I got married too and they invited us to spent the second week of our honeymoon on Grand Cayman, where they lived.

Some years later they moved back to Ireland, so I see them fairly regularly. We’ve even shared a couple of holidays - a week in Westport, Co Mayo, and a transatlantic cruise to New York aboard the Queen Mary.

Bill is a keen climber and his achievements include the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, Mount Teide (Tenerife), and a previously unchartered peak in Greenland that he and his team named Mount Crean after an Irish explorer.

Anyway I caught up with them on Wednesday evening and Bill decided he was going to cook on the barbecue, a skill he perfected while living abroad.

None of your labour saving gas barbecue nonsense. This was a proper charcoal barbecue that you kick start using ‘natural’ fire lighters.

It then takes about 30 minutes for the charcoal to be white hot, at which point you start cooking, but I’m assured it makes a big difference to the taste of the food.

The only thing that marred the evening was the subsequent, and rather poor, Scotland-Switzerland match whose only saving grace was that it was slightly better than England’s performance against Denmark yesterday.

A low bar, I’ll grant you, and thankfully I missed most of the England game because I was still travelling.

Fingers crossed it can only get better but England have been here so many times I wouldn’t bet on it.