On Times Radio this morning Lucy Powell, Leader of the House of Commons, said that she wanted the government to ‘tackle the scourge of vaping’. Of course she does. This is the next natural step for a government intent on stopping people enjoying themselves, or exercising individual freedom. Never mind that vaping, according to Public Health England, is 95 per cent safer than smoking and that it is recommended by the NHS for smokers looking to quit. Government ministers just can’t help themselves.
There’s nothing more morally intoxicating than stopping others deriving pleasure from something you regard as sinful
Labour are drunk on power. They’re in a ban-happy state of euphoria in the wake of their proclamation that they will potentially prohibit smoking outdoors in small parks, outside sporting stadiums and in pub gardens. It matters not that vaping is vastly safer than smoking, and an effective exit drug. If anything, that’s what makes banning it more alluring. There’s nothing more morally intoxicating than stopping others deriving pleasure from something you regard as sinful.
This is what drives the new regime’s mood of prohibition. It doesn’t want to protect the potential outside passive smokers of today, a dubious concept in itself. It seeks – in the words of Baroness Smith of Malvern, the skills minister, speaking on BBC Radio 4 on Friday – ‘to move essentially to a society in which there is no smoking’. This is not a pragmatic approach. This is Year Zero ideology.
Hence the new government’s next target: drinkers. According to the Daily Telegraph yesterday, pub bosses have been warned that ministers could bring in minimum alcohol pricing as part of a health drive. A senior government figure, it reports, floated minimum pricing at an industry event held shortly before the election, with one business representative told the industry needed to ‘get its act together’, or face the prospect of government intervention.
Be under no illusion: this government will intervene when it feels and when it can. This applies as much to what we eat as to what we drink, with the war on obesity being just another front. On Friday it was revealed that the NHS is to go into offices, pubs and building sites to weigh and measure employees, under a national move to prevent heart attack and strokes and offset type 2 diabetes. According to the Times, the scheme, backed by £7 million of government funding, will see more than 130,000 middle-aged people offered free health checks at work over the next six months.
Obesity for the most part is correctly blamed on a poor diet and lifestyle, but food high in sugar and fat is often a scapegoat (the expression ‘junk food’ is itself suspect; there is only a junk diet). Little wonder that we also read yesterday that councils will now be given strengthened powers to stop fast food takeaways opening near schools, to tackle the ‘real problem’ of child obesity. The government’s National Planning Policy Framework will give local councils more muscle to curb new fast food joints opening in their areas. A government insider told the Sun: ‘We have a real problem with childhood obesity yet councils trying to tackle it are being thwarted.’
The government’s ideology is now unmistakably puritan. Witness its desire to repurpose ‘non-crime hate incidents’, so that once more offensive or impolite remarks come under the supervision and remit of the police. Or regard the government’s mothballing of the Higher Education Act, which sought to ensure that free speech was protected on university campuses from censorious activists, the sort who see opinions other then their own as suspicious or dangerous.
The new puritans have arrived in earnest. We have become accustomed to hearing: ‘you can’t say that’. Now we will have to abide by the diktat: ‘you can’t do that’ as well.
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