Even if you accept that the government’s plans for a minimum alcohol price in England and Wales are well-intentioned you can be pretty sure that it’s a bad idea. How so? Well, the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats each agree that something must be done and this kind of cross-party agreement tends to be a healthy indicator there’s bipartisan foolishness afoot.
Alcohol consumption is a complicated phenomenon and the price of drink is only one factor in a story that saw booze consumption fall for decades, rise again towards Victorian levels and then, in the past decade, actually begin to fall again. So is this legislation even necessary? The Prime Minister claims that introducing a minimum price of 40p per unit will “save” 900 lives a year and, somehow, cut crime by some 50,000 incidents. One assumes these figures were plucked from a tombola.
More to the point, a government elected on a promise to reduce state-sponsored micro-management shows itself just as happy to interfere anywhere, anytime as its predecessor. This should not surprise anyone but it is another reminder that if the Tories remain maginally better than Labour it is a matter of degree, not kind. Each party delights in shoving people around.
A 40p-per-unit price may not make much difference to the Notting Hill or Chipping Norton sets; it is a rather different matter for other folk. Like George Osborne’s renewed attack on smokers, this is, largely speaking, a regressive policy that will, mark this, become more, not less, regressive in years to come.
How so? Well, does anyone believe that the 40p-per-unit price won’t be increased? If you do then, blimey, your innocence is touching. No, the miminum price will rise and rise. The health lobby has command of government policy and will not let it go. If minimum pricing is “seen” to be working then we will be asked to imagine how much better it would work if the minimum price were raised still higher. If, on the other hand, it is not “seen” to be working then this sorry fact will be used to justify further price hikes.
It may begin with the poor and those pleased by low-quality booze but it won’t end there. Everyone will pay, it’s just a matter of when and how much. But that’s OK since everyone knows something must be done and this is a something that can be done. Hurrah!
PS: The timing of this is also mildly odd. Is it really clever for the Prime Minister to come to Scotland to attack the SNP on the same day his government pinches an SNP policy?
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