Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

I am angrier with the government about the smoking ban than the Iraq war

Rod Liddle says that the ban exemplifies all that is wrong with Labour: nannying piety, control freakery and an endless capacity for lies. What’s more, it’s put him to considerable inconvenience

This week we have been bombarded with statistics about how the smoking ban, introduced exactly six months ago, has not remotely damaged the pub trade, but has resulted in millions upon millions of people giving up smoking — so that cancer is now a thing of the past. The shovel-faced government minister Dawn Primarolo will have been on your television news spouting these transparent lies and adding, for good effect, that the battle is not yet entirely won: an estimated nine million people in Britain still smoke and the government intends to sort them out, in the fullness of time. I am still not sure what I hate the most about this government: its decision to invade Iraq and thus either effect or facilitate the murder of 500,000 Iraqis, or its decision to stop me from smoking in pubs and restaurants.

I realise I have a problem with perspective and view the world from a position which is what you might call solipsistic. Obviously the dead Iraqis, not to mention our British servicemen, are a far greater calumny to lay at the feet of New Labour than a measure which merely makes my life about 20 per cent more miserable than it was before. But I can’t help it, and every time I see Primarolo spouting her rubbish my sense of proportion warps still further: I think I hate them more for the smoking ban. It sort of sums up everything that’s rotten about them; the meddling, nannying control-freakery; the perpetual obeisance to fashion and susceptibility to the outrageous claims and demands of single-issue pressure groups; the piety and self-righteousness; the notion that they can live our lives for us better than we can. And the recourse to downright lies when the fatuity of their position is exposed.

Only an imbecile would swallow the statement that our pub trade has not been catastrophically reduced as a direct result of the smoking ban.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in