"If there’s a will, there’s a way"

There has been a great reaction to the Forest lunch at Boisdale on Tuesday with one guest writing:

‘Congratulations on a brilliant event - great turn out, fun guests, and importantly strong advocates!’

Other responses have included ‘very enjoyable’, ‘great fun’, ‘I enjoyed it enormously’, and ‘such a joy to be among so many like-minded people’.

Here are my introductory comments. They included a response to Ranald Macdonald’s plea for cigars to be exempt from the generational sales ban.

I’m not against an exemption for cigars but I didn’t want guests to think that Forest is abandoning combustible cigarettes, which we are not.

Anyway, read on … the comments below are mine, not the speakers I subsequently introduced.

Lovely to see some new faces and it’s particularly good to see some younger guests, not because we want the next generation to smoke but because we want the next generation to defend the right to smoke and purchase tobacco, whether it’s cigarettes, heated tobacco, or a celebratory cigar to celebrate a special occasion.

Ranald (above) is right to defend the unique nature of the cigar and point out the difference between cigarettes and cigars. However, Forest has never discriminated between different types of tobacco product. We believe this is a more general issue concerning freedom of choice and personal responsibility, and if you make an informed choice to smoke cigarettes, knowing the health risks, that’s a matter for you, not the government.

Many of you will be familiar with the Tobacco and Vapes Bill which is progressing through parliament at the moment. Having passed the report stage and third reading in the House of Commons last month, the Bill received its second reading in the House of Lords on 23rd April – and we are very grateful to all those peers who spoke against the Bill.

The date for the committee stage of the Bill in the House of Lords has not yet been announced but we know that amendments include an amendment tabled by Conservative peer Lord Bethell who is demanding the ‘complete prohibition of tobacco products from 2040’.

If the generational ban goes ahead as planned in 2027, in 2040 it will be illegal for anyone aged 30 to be sold tobacco, so you could argue that Lord Bethell’s amendment is simply the logical extension of the generational ban. Either way, it’s clear that prohibition is the goal of the anti-smoking lobby, and we all know what prohibition leads to.

Nevertheless, it’s beyond bizarre that while young adults may be allowed to drive trains carrying hundreds of passengers, that same age group will soon be banned from legally purchasing tobacco.

And think of all the other things you can do at 18, or even 17. At 17 you can drive a car and potentially kill someone, including yourself. You can also join the army, while at 18 you can purchase all sorts of age restricted items including alcohol, fireworks, axes, blades, and even crossbows!

Despite that successive governments – Conservative and Labour – have introduced Bills banning the sale of tobacco to anyone born after January 1, 2009, which means that, eventually, not a single adult - young or old - will be allowed to buy cigarettes or even a celebratory cigar.

And it gets even more bizarre because the current Government wants to give children (16 and 17-year-olds) the vote.

Whatever happens, I want to assure everyone here today that Forest will NOT give up the fight and, even if the generational ban becomes law, we will continue to lobby all the main opposition parties to amend or even repeal the Tobacco and Vapes Act if and when they get into power.

It’s happened before – in New Zealand – where the current coalition government repealed legislation that would have banned the sale of tobacco to all future generations of adults in that country.

If there’s a will, there’s a way, so we appeal to parliamentarians of all parties to stand up for freedom of choice and personal responsibility, and not give in to the zealots, the prohibitionists, and those who think they know best how other people should live their lives.

On that note I want to introduce someone who has defended the freedom principle for as long as I’ve known her, which is 25 years, when she was the publisher of Living Marxism.

(Note: I actually said 'Marxism Today' at which point I was rightly heckled by the lady herself!)

In the intervening years she founded the Academy of Ideas and the annual Battle of Ideas festival. In May 2019 she was elected as an MEP in the European Parliament elections and in September 2020 she became a member of the House of Lords.

She’s one of the most principled people I know so please give a warm Boisdale welcome to Baroness Fox of Buckley.

After Claire’s speech I presented a Voices of Freedom award.

Moving on, we would like to present a special award to someone who has been a friend of Forest for almost 20 years, despite the fact that he doesn’t smoke and doesn’t like smoking.

Elected as the member of parliament for Shipley in West Yorkshire in 2005, he has been a guest at several Forest events, including the annual Freedom Dinner that ran from 2012 to 2017. He has also been a panellist at several other events, in London and at party conference.

In June 2010 he joined us for one of our Voices of Freedom debates at the Institute of Economic Affairs when we addressed the issue 'Big Government Is Watching You: the surveillance society and individual freedom'.

Our guest today stirred things up with a passionate defence of surveillance cameras and other tools of what some might call the Big Brother state. Broadcaster Iain Dale, who was chairing the discussion, live tweeted that he was ‘making (a) superb anti civil liberties speech, even if I disagree with virtually all of it!’.

I didn't agree with much of what our guest said either, but he did make me think, and I admired the way he argued his corner. Another thing I admire about him is that, although he freely admits he doesn't like smoking, he defends an adult's right to smoke, and as a member of parliament he consistently voted against anti-smoking legislation, including the display ban and plain packaging.

Before he lost his seat at the 2024 general election his Wikipedia entry described him as ‘the most rebellious serving Conservative MP, having voted against the Tory whip over 250 times in the course of his parliamentary career'. Despite that, he was knighted by Rishi Sunak, with who he remains on good terms.

Ladies and gentlemen, please show your appreciation and welcome to the stage, to receive his well deserved Voices of Freedom award, Sir Philip Davies.

Accepting the award, Philip said a few words before I continued as follows:

Before we finish we have one more award to announce and it goes to the person who has done most to further the cause of the nanny state in the UK over the past year or so.

There were many nominations for this prestigious award but after a couple of pints we whittled the list down to just two and they are the Rt Hon Rishi Sunak MP, former prime minister, and the Rt Hon Sir Keir Starmer MP, the current incumbent of 10 Downing Street.

And to decide the winner, please welcome the founder and editor of the Nanny State Index, Dr Christopher Snowdon.

Chris chose Rishi Sunak as our Nanny-in-Chief. I then wrapped up, thanked everyone for coming, and guests who didn’t have to return to work then retired to smoking terrace. Not a bad way to spend a few hours on a Tuesday afternoon!