A bit of a drag

Much though we value the liberty of the individual, it would be futile to mount a last-gasp defence of the right to smoke in public when a motion to ban the activity has just been passed by a majority of 200 in the House of Commons. While it says little for the Prime Minister’s remaining powers of persuasion that he has been forced by his backbenchers to go beyond the partial smoking ban promised in last year’s Labour manifesto, it would be perverse of us, who have long championed the supremacy of Parliament over Mr Blair’s toadying ministers, to protest against the result of what was a free vote.

Neither can it be said, unlike those other great issues of conscience, hunting and hanging, that MPs have overridden the wishes of the public. We could attack Roy Castle’s widow for whipping up a frenzy of emotion by insisting that the fatal lung cancer contracted by her husband, a non-smoker, was caused by passive smoking — dismissing the reality that there are plenty of other potent triggers for lung cancer, from diesel fumes to radon gas, on top of underlying genetic causes. But the time for that has gone. Our instincts may be libertarian, but they are also democratic, and if we are forced to choose between the two, we are obliged to concede that the anti-smoking majority must have its way.

Besides, it may be that the smoking ban is a one-off. Perhaps it is just the non-smoker’s revenge for all those years of being forced to sit in smoke-filled trains and planes, for being ostracised from the mess room, for being made to feel sexually inadequate by all those finely crafted advertisements which implied that the way to a girl’s heart was through her tarred and wheezy lungs.