At the Adam Smith Institute’s ‘Enlightenment Evening’ event last night New Zealand’s deputy prime minister attacked the UK government’s generational smoking ban. Co-conspirators may remember it was Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government in 2022 which enacted the policy – soon to be replicated by Rishi Sunak and continued by Keir Starmer. New Zealand since elected a tripartite coalition of right-of-centre parties in 2023 which immediately repealed theirs…
The neoliberal ACT party is said to have pushed hardest for repealing the generational ban in 2023 coalition talks and at last night’s event its leader David Seymour – New Zealand’s current deputy PM – said the generational ban was “evil“:
“So basically, if you were born after a certain date, 2010, then you would never be able to buy cigarettes in New Zealand because the age would go up every year. It was quite evil in a way. And so we repealed all of that… there’s a big difference between I don’t like something and something should be illegal… I think there’s some things government can and should do around smoking… it should ensure people know the dangers, that’s been done… it should make sure that people don’t impose fiscal costs on each other, that’s been done. Smokers are fiscal heroes – if you want to save your country’s balance sheet, light up.”
In Seymour’s wide-ranging speech and subsequent chat with Daniel Hannan he said that many governmental departments were expansive and pointless, singling out Miliband’s ‘Department of Energy Security and Net Zero’: “I had to laugh.” Just wait till he hears about Nandy’s brief…
More broadly he said there is a “lack of conviction” in UK politics, whose politicians should “meditate on the values that have allowed us” to flourish: “The people who you have to choose from don’t seem to be doing it in a completely consistent and honest way.” That’s one way of putting it…
The Tobacco and Vapes Bill is at Committee stage in the Lords and such amendments as Lord Bethell’s “complete prohibition of tobacco products from 2040” are up for debate. Will Morgan McSweeney be forced to kill that one as well…
Speaking to Sky News off the back of Rachel Reeves’ Air Passenger Duty hike, Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said:
“Labour is dependent on those Red Wall seats, and yet every move she makes poisons economic growth and damages the UK’s recovery… it’s the Chancellor who stumbles from policy misstep to policy misstep… I think her policy decisions are incredibly stupid.”
