Reform’s plan to save the pub says nothing about smoking
Further to my previous post, I watched the launch of Reform UK’s Save Our Pubs campaign yesterday.
Announced by Lee Anderson MP, who ran through the ‘fiscally neutral’ five-point plan as if he had a train to catch, the MP for Ashfield then handed over to party leader Nigel Farage who took questions from journalists in his usual ebullient style.
Inevitably, given the news about Peter Mandelson, most questions were not about pubs at all. One or two journalists did ask a few pub-related questions but the only one that got much traction – in terms of subsequent media coverage – concerned Labour’s plan to cut the drink-driving limit. The proposal, said Farage, ‘would be a further unnecessary hammer blow to pubs’ and Reform would scrap it (if it was introduced).
Sadly, despite my best efforts, no-one asked about Reform’s policy on smoking in or outside pubs, and the Save Our Pubs website leaves us none the wiser because there is no mention of smoking at all. Neither smoking – nor the impact of the smoking ban on Britain’s pubs – is mentioned anywhere in the crumpled eight-page brochure that Farage proudly held aloft.
Look, I get it. Politically there may be little advantage to Reform in mentioning smoking and pubs in the same breath, but to not even acknowledge the impact of the smoking ban (especially in the context of the decline of the British pub over the past 40 years) is astonishing.
‘Every pub is a parliament’ said Anderson glumly, but like Westminster, Holyrood and the Senedd it’s a parliament that, increasingly, refuses to welcome or even acknowledge smokers and their habit.
The odds on smoking ever being allowed inside pubs again are virtually nil, I would say. Nevertheless we still face a battle over smoking in beer gardens and other outdoor licensed areas. The fact that Reform has airbrushed from its Save Our Pubs campaign the devastating impact the smoking ban had on thousands of pubs in the decade after the policy was introduced in England, Scotland and Wales seems unconscionable to me. Why would the party not mention it?
‘We believe in family, community and country,’ writes Anderson in the foreword to the Save Our Pubs brochure. ‘Pubs have always been at the heart of all three, a space in which the rich tapestry of our union has been woven, physically connecting us to the customs and traditions of our forebears. The term ‘public house’ is telling, every pub is a parliament, where conversation flows freely and the worries of the world are left outside the door. The British pub is the heart and soul of our great nation.’
Fine words, if a trifle nauseous, but that’s all they are – words. As I have often said, smoking is the canary in the coal mine so unless Reform come out and openly support a publican’s right to choose policies on smoking (and vaping) that best suit their business, then it’s hard to take seriously any plans they have to save the British pub.
Home page image: Solstock
