Labour is coming after all that gives us pleasure
What will be the worst aspect of a Labour government? The class war or the wealth taxes, or the kowtowing to every progressive cause? Perhaps it’ll be the renationalisation of railways, guaranteeing the 07.52 from Rainham will never run on time.
What about how joyless life could become under an administration run by Sir Keir Starmer? How far would a paternalistic, restrictive state clamp down on what few pleasures have survived the past 14 years of Conservative government? It’s possible we will soon find ourselves pining for Ed Davey’s harebrained plan, announced this week, to legalise cannabis at the same time he would ban tobacco.
The Tories may have launched a puritanical campaign but under Labour it will become a crusade. Consider Sadiq Khan’s London, where an advert for a West End play was banned because it showed a cake and thus fell foul of his junk food ad ban. Remember how Labour-run Wales responded to restrictions on the sale of non-essential items during the pandemic, where supermarket shelves were cleared and aisles cordoned off.
Take a glance at Starmer’s manifesto with its plans for three- to five-year-olds to have tooth-brushing lessons and the promise to revive the Tories’ Tobacco & Vapes Bill, which will ban cigarette sales for anyone born after January 2009. Wes Streeting has declared he will take a “steamroller” to the food industry; Bridget Phillipson appears to believe children cannot get the “best start” to the day unless it is spent at “free” school breakfast clubs.
And a potential Conservative opposition will struggle to push back against such policies. After all, they attempted to bring in similarly paternalistic rules.
Boris Johnson, who once argued it was the inalienable right of an Englishman to gorge on confectionery, advanced a raft of “anti-obesity” measures that would ban daytime advertising on junk food when he was in power.
His predecessor brought in food reformulation schemes and a sugar tax; his successor expressed “disappointment” that he was not able to get the tobacco ban through Parliament before it was dissolved.
The phrase “nanny state” first appeared with the introduction of a 70mph speed limit on England’s motorways in 1965. Since then it has strayed far beyond its original definition. No longer are we referring to basic safety: now the public health establishment lobbies for ever greater control over what we put in our bodies.
One of the oddities of this development – and the constant demands for decisive government action – is the daily evidence that politicians are woefully incompetent. Yet we constantly clamour to give them more influence in our lives.
The inconsistencies do not stop there. Some economists have warned that there is little evidence any of these policies work. Studies suggest the sugar tax reduced consumption by less than two calories per person per day – while costing consumers £300m a year. Food reformulation has led to shrinkflation: some chocolate bars are now so small that a dual pack is the default.
As the author Christopher Snowdon has pointed out, the burden of these regulations hurt the poor. High prices fuel the black market. Excessive regulation creates excessive bureaucracy and drains police resources.
The cost of red tape to business is seldom mentioned in manifestos; nor are the ways in which it is ultimately passed on to workers in the form of lower wages, and customers through higher prices.
We will all be poorer under a Labour government – and not just financially.
