Is Rishi Sunak the least Tory Tory PM ever? He’s fundamentally Californian at heart: witness his terrible policy to ban cigarettes to anyone born from 2009 which was announced to great fanfare at conference.
That’s what contemporary Conservatism has come to: compulsory clean living
Fortunately, I belong to the lucky generation that can still kill itself with tobacco, though I write as a failed smoker. Try as I might, I can’t get the hang of it, and the times I tried left me with little doubt that it’s not good for you. I gave up the effort some time ago. But the thing about being grown up is that you can do things that are legal but not particularly healthy, like drinking to excess or smoking. The premise of the rules on these things is that we are rational enough to take risks on board and make our own minds up. We may wish that everyone should, after Aristotle, go for moderation in all things, but if we don’t, well, silly us. But that’s no longer how a Tory government operates. You thought the nanny state was a lefty thing? Nope. Rishi has not only taken on that mantle (or cape, I suppose, for nannies) but is bragging about it.
How we laughed when the control freaks in New Zealand decided to implement the phasing out of cigarettes; typical of small-country authoritarianism, we thought. But now it’s coming here – obviously, with the best of intentions – how do Tories square it with their own perception of themselves as the party of personal liberty?
Rishi likes to posit himself as a boy Thatcher. Well, I have no doubt whatever that Mrs T, even if Denis didn’t enter the equation, wouldn’t have any truck with this approach, which is that the government is going to make you healthy whether you want it or not.
Already, it’s quite hard to find anywhere to smoke in the open air, as if somehow you could poison the aether by smoking outdoors. And the preposterous rules about plain packaging and keeping cigarettes out of sight behind iron shutters in shops, like some frightful contraband, still seem bizarre. (I mourn the old cigarette packet; home of brilliant design.) The cost is prohibitive; I don’t know how anyone on benefits can actually afford to smoke, though they probably need the relaxant effect more than anyone. It’s become a rich people’s indulgence, though for the really wealthy, it’s probably less shocking to take cocaine.
The point is: we are already pricing cigarettes out of the reach of the young and badly off. We’re penalising smokers by driving them outside, and then banning them from smoking near buildings: smoking makes you a pariah among the young. Thus, coercion is not actually necessary given that the nudge effect of anti-smoking policies is more like an armlock than a nudge.
As I say, effectively banning people from smoking to create the Smoke Free Generation is an authoritarian, illiberal thing to do. And I don’t suppose that Labour, illiberal and authoritarian in its own way, would reverse the change.
That’s what contemporary Conservatism has come to: compulsory clean living. In other words, Rishi isn’t a conservative at all. Personally I had my doubts about him when he put duty on drink in proportion to its strength, thereby making port more expensive than New Zealand white, which, I felt, said it all. He’s not a drinker, obviously. In demeanour as in habits, he’s essentially a Californian banker who’s been forever marked by his time at Goldman Sachs. He’s also, I reckon, perhaps the most two-dimensional PM ever, with no obvious tastes or habits that mark him out as a Tory. Even the craven zealots at Tory conference are finding him hard to love. I’m not a sectarian in party politics, but no wonder the Tories have lost their way. A party that seeks to ban cigarettes would be unrecognisable to Winston Churchill.
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