Once more unto the Bridge

Went to Stamford Bridge last night to see Chelsea Women play Manchester City in the second leg of the Women’s Champions League quarter-final.

Last season I saw the team go out at the semi-final stage, losing 2-0 (2-1 on aggregate) to European champions Barcelona despite having won the first leg in Spain.

Having gone to a lot of matches at a very different looking Stamford Bridge in the Eighties (when I lived a mile from the ground and could walk there in 20 minutes), it was the first time I’d ever been to a women’s match, although I’d been following Chelsea Woman from the comfort of my armchair for several years.

Despite the result I enjoyed the game, and the occasion, which was played in front of 39,000 people, a record for a woman’s match at Stamford Bridge.

Last night the attendance was estimated to be around 12,000, so large parts of the stadium were empty or closed.

(To put this in perspective, however, Chelsea Women more often play at Kingsmeadow in Kingston-upon-Thames where the capacity is 5,000.)

The atmosphere last night was nevertheless pretty good, especially as Chelsea came from behind (having lost the first leg 2-0) and were 3-0 up at half-time (3-2 on aggregate).

The section I was in, in the Lower East Stand, was full and we got a great view of the goals which were all scored at our end of the pitch, with Chelsea fans also packed into the lower part of the Shed End behind the goal.

As you would expect there are a lot more women and children (girls especially) at women’s football matches, and the upside - for now - is that there is no obnoxious chanting and almost no baiting the opposition supporters (who were in one corner of the ground, close to where we were sitting).

As each goal went in, however, the celebrations were equal to anything you’d get at a men’s match, albeit a bit more high-pitched.

Overall it’s a world away from watching men’s matches where many spectators are in a permanent state of impotent fury with the referee, the opposing team and the opposition supporters, and there’s as much aggression off the field as there is on it.

After last night’s match, when the City players came over to our corner of the ground to applaud their small band of supporters, a significant number of Chelsea fans (including me!) even clapped the visiting team.

Chelsea could, and should, have won by more last night, but the 3-0 victory puts them into the semi-final of the Women’s Champions League for the third year in a row where they will play Barcelona for the third year in a row, having lost narrowly on the two previous occasions.

They also lost to Barcelona in the final in 2021, and bearing in mind that Barcelona beat Wolfsburg, a top German team, 10-2 on aggregate in their quarter-final this week it won’t be easy.

The second leg of the semi-final is at Stamford Bridge on April 27. As things stand, I’ll be there!

PS. On Wednesday, at the Emirates Stadium in north London, Arsenal Women beat Real Madrid 3-0 in another Champions League tie.

Like Chelsea they came from 2-0 down after the first leg and watching it on TV the atmosphere looked fantastic.

I believe the attendance was around 23,000, but I would expect nearer 50,000 for the semi-final against Lyon who are Barcelona’s biggest rival as the powerhouse of women’s football in Europe.

Although Chelsea Women have been more successful in recent years, Arsenal Women had a head start of at least ten years in building a fanbase and they remain the only English club to have won the women’s European Cup (now the Champions League), albeit almost 20 years ago, in 2007.

If I could I’d go to the Arsenal-Lyon match as well, and as a neutral I might enjoy it more! Either way, if you’re interested in football I’d definitely recommend it.

UK on path to prohibition, with the Tories' acquiescence

Some thoughts on the report stage and third reading of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill that took place in the House of Commons yesterday.

One, 366 MPs voted for the Bill, with 41 voting against. Forty-one out of 650 MPs is 6.3%, which doesn’t seem very representative of the population to me.

Consider the evidence.

According to polls conducted for Forest, 60 per cent of adults have repeatedly said that if you can vote, have sex, drive a car, buy alcohol etc at 18 (when you are legally an adult) you should also be allowed to purchase tobacco.

A poll commissioned by Forest only last week found that public opinion was split between a generational ban (39% gave it as their preferred option), raising the age of sale to 21 (31%), and keeping it at 18 (24%).

In other words, 55% of respondents favoured a more liberal option than denying future generations of adults the right to legally buy tobacco.

Among 18-24 year-olds, the age group that will be the first to feel the impact of the generational ban, almost a third (30%) of 18-24 year-olds would keep the legal age of sale at 18, while 36% would raise it from 18 to 21.

Given a choice of options, only 28% of 18-24 year-olds would support a ban on the sale of tobacco to future generations of adults.

YouGov polls conducted by ASH claim that support for a generational ban is approximately 70%, and even if that was true (polls don't lie but they can distort public opinion depending on the question asked) it still leaves a significant number who don't support a generational ban.

Parliament however doesn't always represent the will of the people. Instead it represents the will of the political parties or MPs who, ironically, prioritise their own personal choices ahead of their constituents.

Hence the views of 55% of adults, including 66% of 18-24 year-olds, who told pollsters they preferred options other than a generational ban on the sale of tobacco, were represented yesterday by only 6% of the country's MPs.

For the record, 24 Conservative MPs (out of 121) voted for the Bill, together with 38 Lib Dems (out of 72) and 285 Labour MPs (out of 411).

As expected, not a single Labour MP voted against the Bill. Those that did vote against included 31 Conservatives, six Lib Dems, and three of the four Reform MPs.

(Deputy leader Richard Tice didn't vote so I assume he was absent. Former Reform MP Rupert Lowe also voted against.)

Interestingly, a great many MPs (308) didn't vote at all. OK, that includes the speaker, the three deputy speakers, and the seven Sinn Fein MPs who don't take their seats in parliament, but that still leaves 297 MPs who didn't bother to vote for or against a Bill that we are told represents a major step forward for public health (and, no doubt, mankind).

Of the 297 who didn't vote, 116 were Labour, 63 were Tories, and 28 Lib Dems.

Perhaps many didn't vote because they thought it was a foregone conclusion. Nigel Farage used this excuse after the second reading which I thought was a bit of a cop out, but he voted this time and also made a short speech during the report stage.

Curiously several Tory MPs who voted for the Bill in November didn't vote yesterday, David Davis being one of them.

It's not clear if they consciously abstained or weren't in the House. I'm trying to find out because there is a rumour that the Tories were whipped to abstain, but it's only that – a rumour – and I find it a little hard to believe they would have done that.

Nevertheless it was interesting to note that former Tory leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick was among those who didn't vote yesterday, despite having voted against the Bill at second reading.

Furthermore, I know he was in the House because a number of us shook his hand when he walked past our campaign van in the morning!

For whatever reason, however, Jenrick did not vote against the Bill and we must therefore assume that he, and the majority of his colleagues, now support the generational ban.

I should add that Jenrick's vote was not the only one that changed from the second reading in November. On that occasion the ayes were 415 (compared to 366 yesterday), with the noes on 47. This time the noes fell to 41.

Another Tory MP who voted against the Bill at the second reading but didn't vote yesterday was Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, which was a huge disappointment.

Writing for the Telegraph ahead of the report stage and third reading, Nigel Farage made the point that she had been quite vocal when opposing Rishi Sunak's Tobacco and Vapes Bill last year, but has said virtually nothing on the issue since Labour took power and introduced their own bill.

Instead it was Farage and his Reform colleagues who tabled an amendment to remove the generational ban from the Bill, while Badenoch remained silent.

As I've written before, I'm guessing it was because she didn't want to split the parliamentary party on the issue, given that several of her colleagues (including Bob Blackman, chair of the APPG on Smoking and Health and chair of the influential 1922 Committee) are among the most diehard anti-smoking campaigners in parliament.

Nevertheless it is hugely disappointing that the new Tory leadership has refused to defend what I naively thought were two important Conservative principles.

As I also wrote in a letter to Conservative MPs, including Badendoch, ahead of the third reading:

Opposing the generational ban is also an opportunity to put clear blue water between the Conservative Party and Labour and the Lib Dems on an issue that represents a significant attack on two important principles – freedom of choice and personal responsibility.

Anyway, we are where we are. The House did support one or two amendments, but none of any significance to the more liberal minded.

Farage's amendment to remove the generational ban failed. Likewise the amendment tabled by Sammy Wilson (DUP) that would have replaced the gen ban with a new clause raising the legal age of sale to 21.

The Bill now moves on to the House of Lords. The second reading of the Bill in the upper house is on April 23, after the Easter recess, and it will then move on the committee stage in May followed by the report stage and third reading in the Lords.

The final stages are consideration of amendments (by peers) in the House of Commons, which has to approve the final Bill, followed by Royal Assent.

There is, I think, a danger that anti-smoking peers may propose amendments that make the Bill even more illiberal, but I'll write about that another time.

We know some peers would go further if they could, but the Government may conclude - as it has with banning smoking outside hospitality venues - that now is not the time.

What is clear is that the UK is on the path to prohibition and few people seem to care or are aware of what’s happening.

Freedom fighters

The Tobacco and Vapes Bill passed its third reading in the House of Commons yesterday by 366 votes to 41.

I’ll return to that, and the current state of the Bill, in my next post because it’s worth recording who voted for and against, and what happened to the various amendments that were tabled. But before I do that I want to thank the small band of brothers (and sisters!) who joined us outside the Houses of Parliament yesterday.

We made a fairly late decision to hire a campaign van to patrol Parliament Square and Whitehall for eight hours throughout the day, and the photo op that took place at 11.00am was ‘organised’ at just 24 hours’ notice.

Attendees included representatives from the Institute of Economic Affairs, TaxPayers Alliance, Students for Liberty, and the LSE Hayek Society, and I am grateful to everyone who made the effort.

(Charles Amos, who has been running a grassroots campaign against the Bill, even took a day off work which showed impressive commitment.)

Baroness Fox came from the House of Lords to show her support, and Nigel Farage was close to joining us too, but that’s another story.

The leader of Reform UK wrote an excellent article for the Telegraph in which he rightly had a pop at Kemi Badenoch for falling ‘largely silent’ on the issue despite being quite vocal in her opposition to the original Tobacco and Vapes Bill.

Her decision not to vote yesterday disappointed me and many others but more on that, and yesterday’s vote, later.

PS. Thanks too to Dan Donovan for designing the posters on the van.

Photos: Gokhan Goksoy/VR Agency

Goodnight 😉

Isle of Man considers generational ban on sale of ALL nicotine products

Forest was invited recently to contribute a written submission to an Isle of Man parliamentary committee.

The House of Keys Select Committee on Tobacco and Nicotine Products was established 'to consider proposals for a private member's bill on the subject of tobacco and nicotine controls'.

Chaired by Dr Michelle Haywood MHK (Member of the House of Keys), who proposed the Bill in a speech to parliament last year, ‘The Committee's remit is to consider the subject matter of a proposed Private Member's Bill on the definition and supply of tobacco and nicotine containing products, including prohibiting their sale to people born on or after 1st January 2008 – and to report back to the House’.

I would be surprised if members of the House of Keys (the directly elected lower house of Tynwald, the Isle of Man parliament) were to support a generational ban on the sale of all nicotine products, including e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches.

Nevertheless I’m in no doubt that Dr Haywood's ambition represents the long-term goal of tobacco control activists worldwide.

The deadline for written submissions to the Committee was Friday (March 21) but there is still an opportunity for individuals to respond via this online survey.

It only takes a few minutes so do please complete it before the deadline on Wednesday (March 26).

Interestingly (and I didn't know this until an Isle of Man based reader, Stuart Hartill, pointed it out to me), the voting age on the Isle of Man was reduced to 16 a decade ago.

You can also obtain a driving licence at 16 in the self-governing British Crown dependency, while the Isle of Man TT races famously take place on public roads that to this day have no speed limits.

If however Dr Haywood's proposed private member's bill was to proceed and become law, the sale of tobacco and other nicotine products to anyone aged 18+ would be illegal.

Make of that what you will.

PS. I have never been to the Isle of Man. That's not why I have offered to give oral evidence to the Select Committee, but it would be a nice opportunity should they invite me.

Eye spy

Watched ‘Black Bag’, a fabulously stylish spy movie, at the Everyman cinema in Cambridge today.

Saturday morning screenings are the best, even when the audience is in single figures!

The good knight

I attended a drinks reception on Wednesday to belatedly celebrate the investiture, last year, of Sir Philip Davies.

In March 2024 the former Conservative MP for Shipley was awarded a knighthood by Rishi Sunak in what was described as a ‘surprise’ honours list.

Elected in 2005 before losing his seat at the 2024 general election, Philip was unusual for a politician because he stuck rigidly to his principles, even when they conflicted with policies being introduced by his own party in government.

I witnessed this first hand when he voted against plain packaging of tobacco. He also voted against other anti-tobacco measures introduced by Labour and the Conservatives.

He missed the second reading of Rishi Sunak’s Tobacco and Vapes Bill last April but sent us a message to say he would be voting against it at the third reading.

Of course, the third reading never happened because Sunak called an election, but I have no reason to think Philip wouldn’t have kept his word.

As it happens he never made a secret of the fact that he disliked smoking, but he also took the view that it was not the job of government to dictate how people live their lives.

If I remember, our paths first crossed in 2008 when he hosted, on behalf of Forest, a small tea party in the House of Commons. Writing about it I commented:

Exceeding our expectations, 17 MPs and five peers turned up. Of the MPs, there were eleven Conservatives, five Labour, and one Lib Dem …

Our host, Philip Davies, gave a short, well-received speech. I announced the launch of our new Amend The Smoking Ban campaign. And Trevor Baylis told a joke involving smoking and sex.

The following year (2009) he took part in a panel discussion hosted by The Free Society, Forest's sister campaign, in the Freedom Zone at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester.

I can’t remember what the subject was but that was the year Labour introduced legislation to ban the display of tobacco in shops so I’m sure that was one of the issues we addressed.

The other panellists were me, Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes), Alex Deane (Big Brother Watch), and Claire Fox (Academy of Ideas).

The next year we invited Philip to take part in another discussion (‘Big Government Is Watching You: the surveillance society and individual freedom’) that was one of a series of events organised by Forest/The Free Society at the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Delivering a passionate defence of surveillance cameras, he argued that they act as a deterrent to crime and many violent criminals would not be caught without them.

The event was chaired by political blogger and broadcaster Iain Dale who tweeted, ‘Philip Davies MP making superb anti civil liberties speech, even if I disagree with virtually all of it.’

Famously, Philip voted against the Tory whip over 250 times during his parliamentary career, which made it a little surprising that Rishi Sunak should personally award him a knighthood.

Then again, they both represented Yorkshire constituencies and they seem to be good friends.

Sunak was unable to be present in person on Wednesday so he sent a video message instead. In response Philip was so fulsome in his praise of the former prime minister I was genuinely gobsmacked. I had no idea he was such a fan boy!

Present in the room were members of what Philip called his various ‘families’. These included his actual family, personal and political friends, his current colleagues in the betting industry, and his GB News ‘family’. (He and his wife Esther McVey, who is still an MP, co-presented a show on the channel for two years.)

Faces I recognised included former Conservative leaders Ian Duncan Smith and Michael Howard, and former Tory Chancellor Lord Lamont.

I spoke very briefly to another former Conservative MP David Nuttall who back in 2010 tabled a private member’s bill to amend the smoking ban to allow smoking rooms in pubs and private members’ clubs.

I also spoke to political journalist and self-confessed ‘leftie’ Michael Crick (Newsnight, Channel 4 News) who revealed he is writing a short biography of Edward Heath.

To be honest, though, I didn’t know many guests and when I arrived I didn’t know a single person, apart from our hosts.

Twelve years ago something similar happened when I attended a drinks reception prior to the Political Book Awards in London and I spent the longest hour of my life wandering around, glass in hand, speaking to no-one.

Even now I have nightmares thinking about it.

This time, older, wiser and less diffident, I marched up to two guests - complete strangers - and introduced myself.

One was a finance director, the other described himself as a ‘techie’. We started chatting and ten minutes later I was giving them my business card (at their request, I should add).

In the unlikely event they read this I’d like to thank them because without them the evening might have triggered an old and rather painful memory!

Instead, I ended up speaking to some interesting people as well as paying my respects to one of the good guys in politics.

Below (left to right): Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes), Alex Deane (Big Brother Watch), Claire Fox (Academy of Ideas), Philip Davies and me at a fringe meeting organised by Forest at the Conservative party conference in Manchester in 2009

Reform leads opposition to tobacco sales ban, Tories divided

Update to Wednesday's post about the Tobacco and Vapes Bill.

Led by Nigel Farage, Reform UK has tabled an amendment to remove the generational ban on selling tobacco products to people born on or after 1 January 2009.

Labour's huge majority means it is doomed to fail but it will hopefully be debated on the floor of the House of Commons during the report stage on Wednesday (March 26).

Fair play to Farage and Reform for at least tabling the amendment, something the Tories have failed to do despite Kemi Badenoch's opposition to the Bill.

Unfortunately the Conservative Party is hopelessly split on the issue, but if it goes to a vote it will be interesting to see how many Tory MPs support Reform’s amendment.

Likewise the amendment I mentioned in an earlier post that would replace the generational ban in favour of raising the legal sale of tobacco from 18 to 21.

That amendment has been tabled by the DUP's Sammy Wilson with the support of Conservative grandee Sir John Hayes.

Realistically, given the numbers, both amendments will fall but at least the Bill will face some opposition in the Commons before it moves on to the House of Lords.

See: Tobacco and Vapes Bill – amendments and exemptions