A month after Labour’s plans to ban smoking outside pubs and in parks were exposed, research on the public’s view is pouring in. It’s far from a closed case…

Lobby groups like ASH claim that there is overwhelming support for draconian measures on tobacco which is jumped on by Labour, which insists there has been “a consensus for a long time now that we want to see a smoke-free country.” The data doesn’t bear that out…

YouGov’s snap research had support for a ban outside pub gardens at 51%. A new poll from Yonder Consulting now has less than half of the public support the measure. If you remove the don’t knows, 53% say smoking outside should be allowed, compared to 47% pro-ban. Brits usually support a ban on anything that moves – the fact they aren’t behind Starmer on this one is significant…

Simon Clark, director of smokers’ rights group Forest, who commissioned the poll, tells Guido: “What is clear is that the government has no mandate to ban smoking outside pubs. It wasn’t in the Labour Party manifesto and the public only found out about it after the plan was leaked to a national newspaper.” It’s goodnight sweet prince to the hospitality industry, too…

The Sun’s splash on Labour plans to extend Sunak’s Tobacco and Vapes Bill even further has been all but confirmed by the government:

“We do not comment on leaks. Smoking claims 80,000 lives a year, puts huge pressure on our NHS, and costs taxpayers billions. We are determined to protect children and non-smokers from the harms of second-hand smoking. We’re considering a range of measures to finally make Britain smoke-free.”

Smoking is to be banned in pub gardens, outside nightclubs, on restaurant terraces, in small parks, and on university pavements. From 1980 to 2007 the annual pub closure rate was 0.65% – since the previous smoking ban it has shot up to 2.8%. Tory leadership hopefuls Jenrick and Patel have come out to warn that this new crackdown will savage the industry. No wonder Starmer’s banned from Jeremy Clarkson’s boozer…

DBT warned against the ban on those grounds only to be overridden by Downing Street. Simon Clark, director of smokers’ rights group Forest, rails against the move:

“If it’s true that the government intends to extend the smoking ban to a raft of outdoor areas, Britain will no longer be a nanny state.  We will have crossed a line and become a bully state in which people are punished for the terrible crime of lighting a cigarette outside a pub or in a park.”

MPs, wonks, and freedom lovers of all stripes turned up to the Commons last night to muster opposition to Sunak’s generational tobacco and disposable vape bans. Smokers’ rights group Forest, who hosted the event, brought in a few banners, including one which rubbed Parliamentary security up the wrong way. Security took one look at a banner depicting “Nanny Rishi” and deemed it “offensive” before confiscating it. A clampdown on political caricatures – what will they ban next?

The innocuous banner was later found strewn in lost property. Forest director Simon Clark tells Guido: “The Government wants to prohibit cigarettes being sold to future generations. Are they going to restrict how we protest against the nanny state as well?” The only “offensive” thing here is Sunak’s infantilisation of the public…

New polling from Yonder Consulting on Sunak’s generational smoking ban shows that the public is firmly behind Liz Truss in thinking that adults “must be able to make their own choices about their own lives“. 64% of adults say that when people reach 18 years of age they should be allowed to buy cigarettes and whatever other tobacco products they please. Only a quarter say they shouldn’t. Smokers’ rights group Forest commissioned the poll and is rightly warning we can’t have “a two-tier society” where some adults can and some can’t buy their fags. We already know the ban will cost the taxpayer £9 billion per year…

Liz Truss tells Guido in reaction to the poll: “This is what I am hearing from people I speak to in my South West Norfolk constituency. People want under-18s to be protected. They don’t want adults’ freedoms to be restricted. I fear this is a slippery slope“. Sunak’s useless and unpopular personal crusades are just ceding more ground to do-gooder control freaks…

New research from the TaxPayers’ Alliance, shared with Guido, shows Sunak’s tobacco ban could lose the government £9 billion per year – equivalent to a 1p increase in the basic income tax rate and the higher rate, along with a 1% decrease in the personal allowance. The TPA have crunched latest figures from the OBR and found that, with a cost to the NHS and social care sector of about £3 billion, smokers are paying for themselves in full, and then some. Exorbitant tobacco duties are making sure of that…

Free market think tanks have already warned the black market will move to fill the hole created by Sunak’s new ban. Even if all smokers magically disappeared the net loss to the Treasury would be £6 billion. Equivalent to a 1% increase in the employee national insurance tax…

Meanwhile new polling commissioned by smoker-rights group Forest from Yonder Consulting finds 58% of respondents think if a person can vote, buy alcohol, drive a car, or have a credit card at 18, then they should also be allowed to purchase tobacco. Fewer than a third think 18-year-olds shouldn’t be able to light up…