HHave you ever wondered why pubs in Britain build gardens? They seem like a solid investment now, in the summer, certainly. But what’s the appeal the other 10 months of the year, when the rain is howling sideways under the awning and the only heating is on an automatic timer, meaning you have to get up every 10 minutes to press the button? How does that work in mathematics? I’ll tell you. Smokers.
Smokers keep pub gardens alive. A garden is still a lure for a smoker in winter. It is thanks to smokers, who keep long vigil over the slimy benches and inadequate parasols in the dregs of the year, that the rest of us can pretend we live in Spain in July and August. But now we are told that smokers must be moved – even from the pavement outside, even from smoking areas in nightclubs – to the screeching tundra of “somewhere down the street”, where they will presumably have to queue up, out of the way, while pedestrians try not to look them in the eye.
When asked about these plans – which were presented to the Sun – Keir Starmer said: “(My) starting point here is to remind everyone that over 80,000 people a year lose their lives to smoking.” Fair point. But we’ve done a lot for smokers now, haven’t we? We’re going to have a complete generational ban. The price of a cigarette has shot up and the number of smokers has fallen further and faster than in most other rich countries. You can’t really argue that passive smoking is a problem in the fresh air, or that young people are picking up the habit in a pub, because that falls under the aforementioned age restriction. We’ve been sensible and it’s worked, but it’s starting to turn into a neurosis. We’re the mother who won’t let her eight-year-old have lunch at someone else’s house because the forks aren’t sterilised.
I say this as a nanny state lover. I want stricter regulations on gambling ads and junk food – I even think a gradual ban on smoking is a good idea. I believe that people have limited willpower to break bad habits, especially in the face of the huge commercial incentives to keep them going. Business wants us to eat, smoke and drink to get a huge grave, and the state has a duty to do a little bit of obstruction. But there is a point at which the obstruction has to stop – or you start to agree with the libertarians. That point, I think, has been reached with this.
After all, a favorite libertarian argument against any form of intervention is the “slippery slope” – the idea that just a short distance downstream from, say, a law requiring seat belts for children under 14, the police state is rendered inoperative. Children of men. This sets up regulation as a kind of gateway drug: we’ll be so tripping on the early, sensible laws that we won’t notice when they switch to silly laws, and in this numb haze we’ll drift into full-blown authoritarianism. Well, here’s Starmer’s chance – as a pro-nanny statist – to show that this isn’t true. He can show that we, as a nation, can cope with a bit of boring cigarette packaging without going mad and chasing smokers from every pub door. We’re grown-ups and responsible. We can regulate, but we know when to stop. We won’t binge-drink. We won’t, in fact, ban smoking in the back garden of a Wetherspoons.
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Some have pointed out that the public is largely for this ban. But of course. A recent YouGov poll showed that Britons also like the idea of compulsory ID cards, CCTV cameras on every corner and a central database of everyone’s fingerprints. An Ipsos Mori poll during the pandemic found that a quarter thought nightclubs and casinos must never be reopenedand nearly two in ten were in favor of an indefinite ban on leaving the house after 10pm “without good reason.” The truth is that, just beneath the surface, we Brits are small, treacherous prefects who long to send everyone, including ourselves, to detention. We don’t need an overbearing nanny, but rather a neglectful older brother who occasionally encourages us to seize the day and jump off the stairs. For our own good.
The thing is, it’s easy to ban things. Economist has coined a useful term: “ban hardism” – to describe a trend towards legal inflation; we have an oversupply of tough new laws, often doing the same thing. It is illegal to steal a cat several times over, because MPs know the public like it when they ban cat stealing. But strict rules mean little when they overlap, and even less when overstretched police barely have time to investigate attacks and break-ins. Are they really going to turn up to drag an aggressive smoker from the front of the Ship and Anchor to the Pret three buildings?
I sense a whiff of “ban it harderism” with smoking. The other smoking bans have been popular, so why not ban it even harder? It would make more sense – and be more courageous – for Starmer to focus on areas where legislation is still thin on the ground. For example, if it’s children’s lungs he could do something about the dirty air seeping over too many playgrounds as cars speed past.
If he has to focus on smoking, he can also look at what works. The NHS states on its website that vaping – while not perfect – is one of the most effective tools we have for help smokers quitBut there is now a suggestion, from a Labour MP, that a ban on vaping indoors could be coming soon. So, do we really care about smokers? Or do we just want to ban something?