Thank You Sir Keir

Starmer is starting to help Reform

Thank you Sir Kier.

You’re probably as surprised as me that I have written that, but the fact is that he solved my annual problem of what to buy myself for my birthday. Sir Keir’s announcement that he intends to ban smoking made me buy a cigar, which I thoroughly enjoyed smoking in a public place.

So far in their 50 days of power The Starmtroopers have turned the power of the state against the people in pursuit of their dogma. The rioters, broadly the disenfranchised sick of uncontrolled immigration -many of whom were drunk at the time of arrest – were labelled the “far right” and two-tier Kier considers them terrorists. They have invented a £22 billion “black hole” and removed pensioners fuel payments. Was Rachel Reeves the only person in the UK who didn’t realise that the public finances were screwed, as they have been for decades?  (The deficit is over £120 billion a year.) Now they’re targeting smokers.

To be fair, the smoking ban is one of the few things that was in the Labour manifesto. Yet they haven’t thought it through. The case for smoking is easy to make – those who smoke enjoy it and pay through the nose to have that pleasure. Of course, fastidious, dullard prigs like Starmer (and Sunak) hate people having fun, so they ban it. Sure, smoking kills. But so does all life eventually – “saving lives” really means “deferring deaths” but that doesn’t sound so good.

Of the 667,500 deaths per year in the UK some 74,000 are attributed to smoking related diseases, according to Action on Smoking and Health(ASH), the pressure group set up by the Royal College of Physicians to campaign against smoking, which also states that the average reduction if life expectancy of those smoking is 10 years. The NHS reckons the cost of dealing with smoking is £2.6 billion a year. That’s about 1.5% of the NHS’s £180 billion budget.

Of course, smokers pay duty on the tobacco that they purchase, some £8.8 billion in 2024/25 according to the Office of Budget Responsibility . The government is making a profit out of smokers who pay for the winter fuel allowance and some train driver pay rises. Banning smoking means the government will need to find another £6.2 billion of tax revenue or its spending plans will go up in smoke.

And of course smokers don’t just yield the tobacco revenue. Dying 10 years early saves the government paying the state pension, which for one smoker for a decade comes out at £115,000 saved. If 74,000 smokers didn’t die early every year the government would need to find another £8.5 billion a year to pay their pensions. Had the smokers not shuffled off the mortal coil they would also need housing, health care and ten years later they would die anyway, quite possibly more expensively. 740,000 more people would put yet more pressure on the country’s crumbling infrastructure, and pensioner care.

Any sensible government would be promoting smoking, not adding another £14.7 billion to Rachel Reeve’s black hole. Tony Blair almost did, when he allowed tobacco sponsorship to remain in formula one while returning Bernie Eccleston’s £1 million donation. Starmer is no Blair.

There is, possibly, an argument about lost productivity from ill smokers who work and further loss of economic benefit from dead smokers who used to work. The average age of death of a smoker is hard to find – there are, of course, other morbidities and as we saw during the covid fiasco, multiple causes of death complicate statistics. One oft quoted factoid is that 50% of regular smokers die before they’re 70 (80% of non-smokers live longer). If the average age of death of a smoker is 70 then the economic damage of their demise is much reduced; most smokers will be pensioners before they die, so they’re not producing anything.

One wonders how successful the ban will be. The prohibition of alcohol in the United States gave Chicago Al Capone. In the UK drug use is rife. According to the ONS 3% of the population take Class A drugs  (possession of which carries a 7 year sentence and/or an unlimited fine). The UK is the coke capital of Europe, if not the world. Almost 8% of the population smoke cannabis.

Yet cocaine has been illegal since 1920 and cannabis since 1928. 100 years of law enforcement has failed and the Police have pretty much given up – as you can smell on almost any street or open space in the UK. I sometimes smell cannabis as I trundle round the M25 in my truck, which is terrifying.

Why does the Prime Minister think he will succeed against tobacco, used by almost 13% of the population? Already around 16% of the tobacco used in the UK is smuggled, hardly surprising as the UK is one of the most expensive places to smoke in the world. A ban will simply make smuggling more attractive and profitable.

The policy won’t work, will cost the exchequer money it can ill-afford, increase pension costs and increase the pressure on infrastructure. It will increase the smuggling trade and the mere announcement will have infuriated 6.6 million smokers, many of whom are the “working people” whom Sir Keir thinks he represents and protects. What were his team smoking when they came up with this lunacy?

The most prominent politician who smokes is Nigel Farage. When the libertarian Reform Party gains 6 million smoking votes it will have more votes than Labour. Thank you again, Sir Keir.

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