The Tories could do with some health initiatives
Backlash to Rishi Sunak's restrictions on tobacco and vaping shows a movement in need of recuperation
It’s become a rhetorical cliche to ask what exactly the Conservative party will have achieved in fourteen years of government. Brexit is one answer, same sex marriage another – although the first of these isn’t exactly uncontroversial, while nobody particularly wants to give the Tories credit for the latter.
In fact there’s remarkable cross-party consensus that the Tories have little to show from their decade or so in power, both from angry lefties and a despairing right. And this is reflected in one of the recent fixations of conservative pundits staring down a decade of likely Labour rule1: namely, public health.
Hostility towards any attempt to nudge people towards healthier habits is what’s behind the negative reaction to Rishi Sunak’s plans to hobble the tobacco and vaping industries. Under the prime minister’s plans, the age at which you can legally buy cigarettes and rolling tobacco will start to increase, and disposable vapes will be banned.
These are peculiar policies in terms of electoral advantage. While being guaranteed to annoy most conservatives, I can’t imagine them swinging any votes away from Labour, which can back these policies it instinctively likes without risking the usual headlines from the conservative press about the ‘nanny state’.
I oppose the ratcheting age threshold for buying tobacco, though with the vigour of an old man who has puffed two decks a day since he was 14. But the case for banning disposable vapes is convincing to me. While vapes are probably better for you than tobacco smoke, the disposable kind is an environmental nuisance that appeals to impulse shoppers and teens, with the companies that supply them being a law unto themselves.
A ban on disposables also leaves reusable vapes untouched. While they are pricier on first purchase, they are kinder to the environment and better pitched at smokers trying to quit. (Officially, these are the only people vapes should be marketed towards, though disposables clearly appeal to non-smokers too.)
You can disagree with me on that, and plenty of conservative pundits do. There is a case to be made about the risks of creating a black market for these products. But what strikes me about the policies is that they illuminate how rickety the principles behind the Cameron-Sunak era are as it reaches its end. What’s left, beyond a commitment to allow people to poison themselves in the name of ‘personal responsibility’?
The answer appears to be not much. And while I don’t doubt the sincerity of the journalists, think tankers and other lobbyists2 who advocate for such libertarian policies, you can’t build a major British party on a defence of the old-fashioned hedonism of real ale and rolling tobacco.
Nor does it look especially convincing when paired with other conservative pain points around Brexit, migration, wokery or lockdown’s legacy. Arguments about autonomy, whether personal or national, do not sound persuasive to somebody who doesn’t care about politics but is worried about bills.
To that extent, it’s relieving that much of the backlash to Sunak’s anti-tobacco and vaping policies seems driven more by habit than conviction. Noted alongside the volume of Tory MPs who are stepping down at the next election, this is a party that is exhausted politically, mentally and morally. And while it recuperates in opposition, perhaps it should lay off the fags.
I note that after Boris Johnson’s “stonking” general election victory in 2019, similar predictions of Conservative electoral dominance were made. Five years is a very long time in politics.
Disclosure: I write for CapX, a commentary site backed by the free market Centre for Policy Studies. I also do some work for the Medical Cannabis Alliance, which engages in lobbying activities for the obvious industry.