The Battle of Ideas – a breath of fresh air

A quick reminder that I am speaking at the Battle of Ideas in London this weekend.

I wrote about last year's event here, noting that I took part in the first Battle of Ideas in, I think, 2005.

The first BoI took place over four weeks and featured a series of debates and discussions in a number of small venues across London. Writing about it later, I recalled that:

It concluded with a dinner to which every speaker was invited and that was the moment I realised how much more enjoyable it was to exchange views in a civilised manner without being dragged down to the level of party politics or no platformed by adversaries whether it be the tobacco control industry or anyone else.

It was the first time too that I began to realise that the political debate wasn’t as simple as left versus right because the political boundaries are often blurred, especially when it comes to free speech and individual autonomy.

Invited to endorse the event the following year, I commented:

The Battle of Ideas is a breath of fresh air. Freedom of speech is actively encouraged, which is hugely liberating. Audience and speakers are refreshingly candid. Apart from speaking their minds, many of them enjoy a drink. Others like to smoke. This is the real world, not the grey, bland, sanitised world our political masters would like us to inhabit.

In 2007 Forest organised and sponsored the farewell drinks party on board The Elizabethan, the Mississippi-style paddle steamer that we subsequently hired for our own boat party, Smoke On The Water, from 2011 to 2017.

A personal ‘highlight’ was discharging myself from hospital in order to host another farewell party at Ognisko, the smoker-friendly Polish club in South Kensington following the Battle of Ideas in 2008. For the full story of that bizarre weekend click here.

Since then I’ve spoken at the BoI on several occasions, the last time in 2019 (above) when we discussed 'problem lifestyles'.

Free speech is arguably under greater threat than ever. So too is smoking, which is why I was pleased to be invited this year to address the subject 'Freedom: Up In Smoke?' which is also the title of the essay I have just written for the Academy of Ideas.

Today, the Battle of Ideas is almost alone in giving a platform to the 'in defence of smoking' lobby. For that, and many other reasons, I urge you to support it.

Tickets for this weekend's event are available here.

Another Yorkshire post

Just back from a short break in Harrogate.

My wife and I are regular visitors to the picturesque North Yorkshire town.

We started coming here after I was invited, in February 2012, to give a presentation at a seminar hosted by the Federation of Licensed Victuallers at The Old Swan Hotel.

Later, having made my escape, I was lucky enough to get a table in Betty’s, the famous and slightly kitsch Yorkshire tea room, without having to queue round the block.

Bathed in warm winter sun and enjoying a pot of tea with a Fat Rascal, I remember thinking, "I like this town".

Before that I had been to Harrogate twice, I think, each time on business, but it was my second visit, on July 7, 2005, that I remember most because it was the day of the terrorist bombs in London (7/7).

I had been invited - with Deborah Arnott of ASH - to address a meeting at the Local Government Association annual conference. I travelled up the previous day and was in my hotel room watching breakfast television when news of the bombings started filtering through.

One bomb went off at Kings Cross at the same time that I often passed through the station on my way to work at the old Forest office in London.

Several people, thinking I might be at Kings Cross, tried to contact me. However, following the blast, the mobile phone network was down, so they resorted to email and I was able to tell them I was 200 miles away.

The debate with Deborah Arnott went ahead as scheduled but many delegates preferred to watch the unfolding news on the TV monitors in the foyer of the exhibition centre.

Others were busy checking out of their hotels before rushing back to London, so it was a rather muted occasion.

It certainly put the proposed smoking ban in perspective. Why was so much time and energy being spent urging politicians to ban smoking in every pub and club in the country when there were far more important issues to address?

I feel the same about Rishi Sunak’s generational smoking ban. Given everything else that is going on in the world, internationally and at home, it seems preposterous that the Government is allocating precious parliamentary time to banning the sale of cigarettes to future generations.

But I digress.

Over the past ten years Harrogate has become, if not our second home, then our first choice for a short break. Sometimes we stay for two or three nights. Or we stop overnight for dinner and breakfast before driving north through the beautiful Yorkshire Dales and on to my in-laws in Scotland.

We like it so much we've considered moving there. Property isn't cheap, though, so the nearby towns of Ripon or Knaresborough might be more realistic.

Either way, I'll keep you posted!

Above: Autumn leaves in Harrogate this week with the famous Stray in the background; below: outside the Slingsby Gin shop, Christmas 2019

Freedom: Up In Smoke?

I have written a short essay for the Academy of Ideas:

From David Hockney to Syrian women smoking cigarettes in defiance of religious extremism, smoking can be an expression of personal and political freedom. Unfortunately, writes Simon, such freedoms are increasingly undermined by public-health measures, designed to control and regulate our behaviour beyond what ought to be reasonable.

‘Freedom: Up In Smoke?’ is part of the Letters on Liberty series of pamphlets and you can download (or purchase) a copy here.

I shall also be discussing the subject at the Battle of Ideas which takes place in London next weekend when I will be joined by philosopher, author and lecturer, Dr Piers Benn, and businessman and former Brexit Party PPC Rick Moore.

Are you listening, Rishi?

A friend has reminded me that it was ten years ago this week that I took part in a debate hosted by one of the world's oldest debating societies.

Founded at Durham University in 1842, the Durham Union Society holds weekly Friday night debates on topical issues.

Ironically, in view of Rishi Sunak’s recent announcement, the motion on Friday October 18, 2013, was ‘This House would ban all tobacco products'.

Opposing the motion with me was Nick Barton, a retired headmaster and a tutor at Durham. As I wrote at the time:

What a lovely man. He brought with him a number of pipes and snuff boxes that have passed down through his family, including a pipe that was smoked on the battlefield in the First World War.

He spoke about them, and the pleasure and comfort they had given several generations of his family. He spoke quietly - albeit with a twinkle in his eye - and kept it personal. It was affecting, and effective.

In contrast our principal opponent, Dr George Rae, chairman of the North East BMA, bombarded us with so much information it was hard to keep up or take him seriously after he insisted he was against the nanny state.

The floor contributed some interesting points and questions, but what I remember most was the good-humoured atmosphere, and I sensed the debate was going our way.

Durham Union Society debates are decided by ‘acclamation’ - that is, the biggest roar of support from the chamber - and it was following this process that the chairman (a self-confessed smoker!) announced that the motion to ban all tobacco products had been defeated.

The question is: are you listening, Rishi?

See: Libertarians 1-0 Prohibitionists

My first podcast

Until this week the closest I had got to appearing on a podcast was a recent request to take part in the Sky News Daily Podcast.

That fell through because of ‘technical problems’ but not before I had downloaded, as requested, a shiny new app that describes itself as ‘Your online recording studio’.

On Wednesday however I finally joined the global podcasting fraternity when I was interviewed for an episode of TPA Talks, the TaxPayers Alliance podcast.

There are 25 episodes on YouTube and previous guests have included journalist and broadcaster Julia Hartley-Brewer, education reformer Katherine Birbalsingh, and comedian Leo Kearse, so I am in good company.

I arrived shortly after lunch and was led into a small but impressively equipped studio at the back of the TPA’s office in Westminster.

Unfortunately, despite being told that most TPA Talks last 20-30 minutes, verbosity got the better of me and I couldn't stop talking.

Perhaps it was the relaxed, friendly environment, but I’m mortified to report that I was still talking even as we passed the hour mark.

I can only apologise to my hosts who were lovely and far more professional.

I’ll post a link to the edited version when it ‘drops’. Available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and other platforms.

Above: with TPA operations manager Benjamin Elks

Tom cruises in to Lord North Street

I’m a little late to this but congratulations to Tom Clougherty who, it was announced on Friday, has won the race to be the new director-general of the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Tom will take over from Mark Littlewood who announced in August that he was stepping down after 14 years.

If you’re unfamiliar with the name, Tom’s think tank pedigree is pretty impressive. A former executive director of the Adam Smith Institute, he subsequently spent several years in America working for the Reason Foundation and the Cato Institute, before returning to the UK to work for the Centre for Policy Studies.

He starts his new job at 2 Lord North Street in December, I believe, and I wish him well.

See also: Mark Littlewood: End of an era

Below from left to right: John Burton, non-executive director of Forest; John O’Connell, director, TaxPayers Alliance; Tom Clougherty; and Dr Eamonn Butler, co-founder, Adam Smith Institute

Accidents of timing

Two weeks ago Forest hosted a panel discussion at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester.

The title, 'Smoking Gun: The Infantilisation of Britain', was actually chosen six months earlier for an event we hosted at the IEA.

Although the conversation had moved on, with the Government announcing what seemed to be a relatively liberal and sensible approach to tobacco control, we nevertheless kept the title for Manchester because it still felt relevant.

As it turns out - and as Benjamin Elks of the TaxPayers Alliance pointed out in a blogpost last week - Forest’s fringe event in the Think Tent suddenly looked rather prescient.

And here’s another accident of timing. At the end of the month I shall be speaking at the annual Battle of Ideas in London.

The subject, ‘Freedom: Up In Smoke?', may sound like a reaction to Rishi Sunak’s recent policy announcement, but it’s actually the title of a short essay I wrote for the Academy of Ideas, organisers of the Battle of Ideas, in July, long before the prime minister u-turned on tobacco policy.

It’s one of a series of pocket-sized pamphlets that are collectively called Letters on Liberty. The first three were published in December 2020 and they have been appearing at regular intervals, three at a time, ever since.

When ‘Freedom: Up In Smoke?' is published with two other Letters it will bring the number up to 36.

Copies will be available at the Battle of Ideas but for those who can't join us at Church House, Westminster, on October 29 there may be another event next month to mark its publication. Watch this space.

Let’s see ACTion

Have you been following the election in New Zealand? In January I wrote:

If anyone is hoping that the resignation of New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern might signal a change in tobacco policy, don't hold your breath.

The law that will make it an offence to sell tobacco to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009, has already been passed by the New Zealand Parliament so it would be a surprise if it was reversed, even if the governing party (Labour) was to lose the general election later this year.

The purpose of that post (New Zealand - meet the new boss, same as the old boss?) was to query whether a change of government might prompt a change of policy.

I wasn't hugely optimistic, pointing out that:

Christopher Luxon, leader of the centre right National Party, is already on record saying he is "broadly supportive" of Labour's plan so don't expect much change there.

If there is a tiny flicker of hope it probably rests on there being a hung parliament in which the National Party can only govern with the support of smaller parties like ACT.

Nine months later Labour has been heavily defeated and Luxon is about to become prime minister.

Intriguingly, however, results suggest the National party will probably require the support of ACT, the ‘libertarian’ party whose leader David Seymour last year tweeted:

Labour’s authoritarian prohibition of tobacco has been signed up to by every party except ACT. Prohibition has never worked and it always has serious unintended consequences.

In January the Sunday Times even reported that Seymour ‘would seek to reverse Labour’s anti-smoking legislation if his party gains office'.

“This has gone beyond a public health initiative to a public control initiative,” he said.

Realistically, I would be surprised if tobacco policy is a hill Seymour will choose to die on.

Nevertheless, if the National party does need ACT's support, the issue should at least be on the table for discussion.

Either way, Sunak would be well advised to watch developments closely.

The new law may not have been a major election issue in a country where it won’t have any direct effect on consumers until January 2027, but nor did it provide the incumbent Labour Party with any sort of bounce in the polls.

Likewise, polls in the UK are largely the same as they were before the party conference season so if the aim was to generate support it would seem that Sunak’s ill-judged policy announcement has been a failure here too.

Put simply, if the PM hoped that a war on tobacco would rally the troops and attract floating voters he was poorly advised, as Jacinda Ardern and her hapless successor Chris Hipkins have now discovered.