What, you might ask, has Rishi Sunak been smoking? There is no way to spin as conservative the idea of working towards a complete ban on cigarettes by legislating a progressive age-related bar on buying tobacco. This is not conservatism as libertarianism or as the Scrutonian practice of not taking the axe to existing social institutions. The only serious precedent is not happy: think supremely bossy Jacinda Ardern, the New Zealand premier who brought in a similar draconian ban last December before abruptly leaving politics.
Rather like Prohibition, this will open the door to bootlegging and racketeering
Admittedly, there is on one level a kind of abstract logic here. A lacklustre Keir Starmer, seeking a shiny new health policy. would probably have hit on this wheeze himself in the next few months. This pre-emptive raid on Labour’s wardrobe neatly blocks it. Young voters who would be affected by the policy overwhelmingly don’t smoke anyway, and the older Tory supporters who like a couple of Marlboros after dinner wouldn’t be deprived of them. And since Rishi has an interest in reassuring wavering electors that he is a pragmatist rather than an ideologue, what better than a combination of cracking down on vapes with completing some unfinished business on public health?
Unfortunately this is one area where the Tories should be very careful with hedge fund manager logic, however impeccable it might sound in a meeting room. A number of points should ring alarm bells.
One is that it will, rather like Prohibition a century or so ago, open the door wide to bootlegging and racketeering. This racketeering, moreover, may well attract a good deal more sympathy once it becomes not simply a matter of lorry-drivers making a few Euros on the side by bilking the Revenue of some tax, but a matter of supplying a genuine want which an authoritarian government is trying to stifle.
Secondly, the Tories are risking much of the progress made so far in clawing back some of Labour’s lead. This progress is largely due to Rishi’s reputation for getting on with the job in hand and opposing unnecessary government grandstanding on issues few care about. By contrast, the smoking policy, an intrusive piece of interference demanded by nobody apart from a few grim zealots in the BMA who would not be seen dead voting Tory anyway, is exactly what the government should be running a mile from.
Thirdly, the policy is open to ridicule, which is always a big risk. ‘You are charged that on the first of April last you attempted to buy a packet of Silk Cut, being at the time aged less than 27’ isn’t a phrase any prime minister should want to be associated with. Whatever the logic of the matter, British workers in Romford and Rochdale still have a keen eye for the state poking its nose in matters that they see as none of its business.
The Conservatives need eye-catching policies, it is true, if only to differentiate them from the unutterably grey Keir Starmer. ‘Steady as she goes’ is a non-starter: if Rishi wants confirmation of this, he need only look back roughly a century, to what happened to ‘safety first’ Stanley Baldwin in 1929 (hint: he lost). To be fair, Sunak has begun to see this: he is already making the right noises about dealing with the anti-car fanatics, for example, and has been fairly skilfully laying the groundwork for a sudden satori-like discovery that net zero 2050 is ruinous, electorally impossible and not going to happen.
But he needs more. And the irony is that he has plenty to choose from that will go down well among the just about managing outside the south-east. Outlawing zero-hour contracts will please not only academic leftists but ambitious parents in Doncaster and Darlington (not to mention Dover) worried about their children’s employment prospects. A promise of legislation making it illegal, barring tightly-controlled exceptions, for any employer to dictate what its employees can say off the job would also appeal to the feeling of many workers that there should be a part of their life they can call their own. The list is endless.
Measures like the smoking ban are a mere distraction. Even if they don’t make potential Tory voters go for Labour or the Lib Dems they will leave large numbers wondering whether there is any point in bothering to turn out. Rishi needs to realise this and concentrate on what people want, not what his logic tells him they ought to support.
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