Coffee House Shots
How far will Starmer’s smoking ban go?
The Spectator Magazine is the greatest magazine in English language. Subscribe today for just £12 and receive a 12-week subscription in print and online to see for yourselves. Also, against my advice as editor, we're giving away a free £20 John Lewis Awetro's voucher. Given that you're spending 12 quid, you can do the maths. Go to spectator.co.uk/voucher. But don't hurry because this offer probably loses us money. Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shorts, the spectator's daily politics podcast. I'm Patrick Gibbons and today I'm joined by Kate Gibbons and Kate Andrews. So, Keir Starmer's Europe trip continues in Paris as the Paralympics get underway, but Katie, that hasn't stopped domestic plans from leaking, there are reports that Starmer will seek to extend the indoor smoking ban. Could you tell us a little bit more about that? Yes, so this is a story broken by the sun and it relates to Rishi Seidak's smoking ban, which of course, he never quite got over the line. It was one of his big free announcements at party conference and the plans for a smoke-free generation, as he called it, whereby if you were born at a certain point, depending on when it came in, those under 16 would never ever be allowed to buy a cigarette, as opposed to, you know, bands whereby you raise taxes or try and put things off by birth, some would just never be allowed to buy cigarettes. They're sibling who says not they're sibling, that wouldn't work biology. The friend who's one week older might then be able to buy over there in the cut-off point and so forth. Now, Rishi's don't do not put that in the wash-up when he called the election, but labor announced in the king's speech they would be resurrecting the bill. What the sun has reported, and I think it's been widely followed, known as disputingness under consideration, is that they plan to strengthen the bill, if you could call it that, and they're considering banning smoking in a variety of places, so as well as bringing in this age limit, you could also have the case that no one of any age could smoke in pub gardens, outdoor restaurants, outdoor sports venues, nightclubs and in small parks. So a real widening of what they're trying to mean by creating a smoke free generation, and a real much, you know, of course, think to labor, smoking in, smoking indoors feels like a long time ago now, but I think that this would be almost making it so it's pretty hard to smoke outdoors. Of course, you could do it in your own garden, perhaps a large park, but lots of the more commercial places where people would go outside to smoke would be off the menu. Now, I think it's worth pointing out this isn't, while it is being considered, it's not definite yet. I think in terms of the parliamentary party in labor, it was always the case there on the nanny state. This was something where they're likely to give fella and a Tory government word. I think some of the unhappiness in the Tory party of every city that can smoke free generation was, was he creating an environment thereby it is easier for labor to give further? And the Tories often, you know, those around the city didn't really accept that, but this is an example of that, and of course, they could go further in lots of different places, you know, fast food, eventually, alcohol and others. And I think the parliamentary labor party, I can't imagine them being a huge rebellion here, even if you think about Rishi's new next smoking ban, you know, there's only a very small Tory rebellion. But the labor party, unlike to be so opposed, I think where there could be potentially some rubble, reconsideration, or at least a debate, is more the business response, because you could start to have, you know, some restaurants and businesses saying, hang on a minute, how is this going to impact, you know, our ability to do things at a time when the hospitality industry is already struggling for various reasons. Kate, Katie mentions the business reaction that pubs have, you know, struggled quite a lot, particularly since lockdown. I think it's estimated that about 500 pubs closed in 2023. Is this just another additional issue for pubs and for businesses like those to face? Well, it absolutely is. It'll make life harder. It'll make it harder to get customers through the door. If you look at this from the business point of view, it's going to hurt local industry. If you look at it from the tax point of view, it's probably going to reduce revenue, although we expect labor will be trying to find new revenue razors and new levers to pull in their October budget. If you look at it from a principal point of use, just simply talking about individual liberty and private health choices, whether or not adults should be able to make those choices for themselves. I think you have a lot of strong arguments against policy like this, but these arguments just aren't landing anymore. It's incredibly depressing. And the Tory smoking ban, as Katie says there, was really the start of that slippery slope. Actually, no, I'm sorry, that wasn't the start of anything. We had the sugar tax under the Tory party. We had lots of nannying policies under the Tory party. But when the Tory smoking ban was announced that you were going to create two tiers of consumer rights, that, to me, was inherently a problem. And that was a really difficult aspect of this public policy. What happens when you create two tiers of consumer rights? What happens to personal liberty when people who are 95 years old have different rights than people who are 96? How do we really wrap our heads around that? But one of the huge risks of the Tory's generational smoking ban was always what labor would do with that. But she's now always suggested, look, here's where it stops for me. This is how far I want to go. Well, for the labor party, that was obviously going to be the jumping off point, because while labor has not been terribly forthcoming about a lot of public policy, about a lot of tax policy going into the election and since, we're only starting to get hints now of what's to come. One of the few areas the labor party was very clear about going into the election is that it was going to warmly embrace the nanny state. This generational smoking ban originally from New Zealand, which has now been axed there by the coalition government, was the idea of west treating the health secretary now to bring to the UK. This was his initiative that the Tory party took. Kia Stama has said quite recently, I think it was at the start of this year that he might have been the end of last. It was very recently that he said he would warmly embrace the nanny state. He was not afraid to take on the battle of the nanny state. This could involve more smoking regulation, this could involve food, this could involve all kinds of things. And this was always the huge risk that the Tory's opened the door and made it very difficult to push back. I mean, you may see with a new Tory leader, you may see with a reform Tory party that they do start to stand up for liberty once again, but it's going to be very difficult given how many Tory MPs voted for where she see next smoking ban. There's going to be a deep sense of hypocrisy that now that labor are doing these things, the Tory party doesn't like it anymore. And I would be happy, though, at least for them to say they changed their mind. I mean, I think the real fear here, and it's completely possible, is that politicians across the board just accept that this kind of meddling is where the UK wants to go. You know you live in a liberal society when you are willing to stand up for the rights of people who do things that you don't like. As long as they are not hurting other people, you stand up for the right to smoke, to drink, to eat bad food. You stand up for the right for people not to treat their body so perfectly, not because you think it's good, not because you've advocated, but because adults have the right to do what they want as long as they're not harming other people. And that defense of liberty has been incredibly quiet, especially since COVID, but I would say even before then. And the labor party does not plan to make it clearly, maybe a reform Tory party will, but they've made it much harder for themselves. I think it's also worth pointing out that obviously we can make the liberty arguments here. Is this going to be an unpopular policy? Now, there's clearly some kickback today. There's lots of people messaging, you know, what on earth, what's happening to my Friday night, what's happening to my Saturday afternoon, perhaps what's happening to your weekday plans as well. You know, there's a poll I think this from a few years ago that you got did, which was, would you support repose banning smoking on pavements outside pubs or restaurants and cafes? You had 39% strongly support, 20% somewhat support, 16% oppose, 70% strongly oppose, 8% don't know. So clearly some people won't like it, but I think we've seen lots of these measures often, you know, the smoking ban and others that there is, there is often public buy-in. I think that the most effective argument against it is, and there is clearly a liberty argument in terms of what we can do and whether the government plan to go. But I think in terms of what might give them pause for thought is that point about all these businesses, hospitality pubs, and again, you link back to those things. But what labor is looking at is ultimately, they're pretty relaxed about nanny state measures. And we're streeting, as Kate has said, has been, you know, relaxed about those. And they're looking at ways that they can crack down on things that they think are adding strain to the NHS. So the point is you could get this, they probably think they can get away with it, they perhaps can based on that poll. And then from then, where do you go? I would imagine fast food and others are harder to do. But you know, I think, you know, the changing parameters of the debate is that, you know, with the Tories, yes, the sugar tax, but also you kept having these back and forth partly because of the Tory leaders on should we be advertising two-for-one fast food deals, then do this, then do that. In the Labour Party, I think it's going to be much less debate about that, and actually much more unity on it. On the point about who is going to provide opposition here, Nigel Farage has already written one article saying, "I'll never go to the pub again if outdoor smoking is banned." So you have the lead of reform actually going on the liberty point. And if it's was brown, I think it would be interesting to see which of the Tory leadership candidates go there. I suspect Cami Badernock might, but to Kate's point, there have been, you know, is it something Tom Tugin had would do? That's fine out, but I think it would be an interesting test on how they are pitching themselves on making these arguments that are important, but often not the, perhaps, the mass people pleasing arguments. Kate, Katie talks about the strain there between popularity of a measure and the liberty argument. I saw a joke recently that instead of talking about abolishing the House of Lords, people should say ban the House of Lords because the British public tend to like banning things. It's that part of the challenge for, you know, the Conservative Party leadership, for example, that people don't actually know what the best way to approach some of these measures is. I think it's a challenge to all of us. It really is, especially post-COVID, especially post all the curtain twitching and the deep desire to be told what counts it as a substantial meal and the deep desire by, I think, it was 25% of the public after COVID to see nightclubs stay completely shut. I think the challenge is to all of us to say, you know, just because you don't like something or just because the majority, dare I even say sometimes the vast majority doesn't like something. It doesn't mean that we to ban it. That is kind of the basis of a liberal society that certain fundamental rights, especially when it comes to your own body or just off limits for other people to decide. And I think politicians are taking advantage of the fact that, you know, those principles really did get lost. They got very muddled during the pandemic. And this is always the risk that one politician's bugbear then becomes public policy. And they say, but that's it for me. For a SUSNAC, that was not children. Children cannot smoke. They cannot sell cigarettes to children. That is banned across the board. His bugbear was that one day children become adults and they might start to choose to smoke as adults. So that's what he wanted to get rid of, ban the sale of cigarettes to future adults. But that's where he wanted to stop. While other politicians are going to have other niggles, other frustrations, other things that they would personally like to seek on. And it doesn't take so many of those politicians to go through the cycle where all of a sudden things that, you know, we still might not condone, we still might not advocate, but things that really shouldn't be banned should be up for a personal decision. All of a sudden are taken out of the card deck. It's incredibly worrying. And I agree with Katie. I'm not sure the Liberty argument does land as strongly as it once did, but we should all be very concerned about that. So yeah, it's absolutely a challenge to the Tory party. And Kimmy Badnock didn't vote for the smoking ban when it was a free vote under her she's seen that, which I do think is important to note, given that she is in this leadership race. But really, it's a challenge to all of us. Get on that. I mean, Robert generic has gone against this, but on the grants of thousands more pubs closing. So I think a key tell would be, and perhaps he will also make Liberty argument, but it will be interesting to see which of them go on in the business case and which them go on as we're saying, perhaps they're slightly less popular, but it says something about the candid argument. Yeah. And Katie, as hospitality sort of real from this suggestion today, this proposed measure, there are already some signs of discontent following Kierstarma's speech on Tuesday that some people in business may be getting buyers remorse from getting close to Labour, perhaps? Yeah, I think of course on Tuesday, you had Kierstarma saying a painful budget to come. And also those are the broader shoulders will be the ones expected to carry them, the heaviest burden. No, I don't think that's the most controversial statement. But yeah, of course it's speaking people because there's lots of speculations to where exactly race rates will go. She continuously won't rule out capital gains. She also won't rule out inheritance tax. I think today we didn't, we had a fuel duty raise that was not ruled out. I mean, effectively, I don't think Labour are going to rule out much because as soon as you get into the habit of ruling out things, you can start to read between the lines and what they're doing. Also, you are changing capital gains tax. You really want to do it as a surprise. So not everyone changes their habits in advance and then do it in that way. I'm not sure. I think there's such heavy speculation now that that's one of the main avenues she has open to her based on the manifested spending grants. But there's lots of reports of wealth managers, obviously giving advice on second homes, assets, what you should do and all these different things. And so you could have some movements ahead of them. But I think just taking together, Rachel Reeves did do, I think, just objectively a good job winning the trust of various senior business figures ahead of the election. And some of that, things like their planning reform and others is appealing and is some way to get private investment over. But I think increasingly, repeatedly giving speeches about how awful things are and how the economy is in a really, really bad place and the disaster state of the public finances. It does start to chime against the other thing Labor is trying to do, I think, which is to say, we're a great place to invest, come over here, new government. And I think you can start to pick up the tensions on, is that starting to rub up against in a damaging way to the effort for private investment. And then also, how far can you push these things? Because of course, there's a non-dom crack down coming. And you had the workers write package coming in. And do you push it to a point whereby London, you came or generally starts to look like a less attractive place to some of the high net worth individuals that they've actually once here investing. It's interesting to consider how Labor used its time when it first came into power at the start of July and what happened over the course of that month. I would say you had two really big things. You had planning reform, the announcement of planning reform, the fact that they were going to basically bulldoze through loads of different pieces of red tape and we were going to get building. And then you also had the public sector pay awards, which were inflation-busting pay raises given to teachers, given to health staff, then you had the deal with the train drivers. And we're talking about billions and billions of pounds awarded in public sector pay. And I guess the big question that I think a lot of business would be asking now is which direction is this going in? Because as Katie says, I think they really like the planning reforms. But then you see a lot of money spent very, very quickly. Labor says the public finances are an absolute disaster. We have to clean it up. This can be very difficult, very painful. Rachel Reeve started that narrative long before the election. She doubled down on it, with what she said was a 22 billion fiscal black hole. Kia Stama this week is building on top of that. We're in for tough times. Basically taxes are going up. We need to get somewhere better. And at the same time, they're spending a ton of money. And this is money that you now have to account for forever, right? Because the public sector pay raises are baked in. So they're spending a ton of money. And business, I'm sure, I mean, I think everybody business included will be thinking to themselves, like, well, how are they paying for this? And what is this government really going to be about? Is it going to be about the growth initiative, in which case you look at something like capital gains tax? And if you're a small business and medium-sized business, you're very worried because you're relying a lot on private investment at the moment. And you want to make private investors as keen as possible to invest in your small business. And because we didn't have these conversations ahead of the election, because this was all on complete lockdown, it's just very difficult for people to get a real sense, not just of the specific changes that are coming, but what is the overall trajectory? Are taxes going to be raised so that labor can spend a lot more money, in which case they might just pull the easiest levers to get more revenue? Or is there going to be a wider growth conversation around this? What are the best taxes trays? Or to reduce or to change or to reform if you're looking at trying to grow the economy? I just don't think we have those details yet. And as the Institute for Fiscal Studies continues to repeat, Paul Johnson is very good on this point. All of these questions have been asked, not just before the election and the weeks before, like a year running up to the election. Keystone is right to say that the public finances are in a dire state. I don't think that is so simple as to say, "Oh, the Tories pulled a shade over this, and now we're letting in the light and we're seeing all these horrors." No, no, no. The officer budget responsibility makes very clear twice a year what is underneath the surface. And we've known for a very long time that promises have been made around health care, around pensions that fundamentally aren't affordable right now. Something's got to give. So his overall narrative isn't necessarily wrong. It's just not new. And if he's decided his government's going to deal with that, that's going to mean incredibly painful and difficult choices. Well, thank you, Kate. Thank you, Katie. And thank you for listening to Coffee House Shots. [Music]