Keir Starmer may ban smoking in beer gardens and outside clubs

Keir Starmer recently warned that life in Britain is going to get worse — and it turns out he wasn’t kidding. According to leaked documents (which have yet to be confirmed, so take this with a pinch of salt), the government is considering banning smoking from a range of outdoor settings, including outside hospitals, sports grounds, children’s play areas, open-air clubs and outdoor restaurants.

Government interventions aimed at improving public health aren’t inherently bad, and some of these new proposals are fair enough – I’m not going to campaign for my right to blow smoke in the faces of an under-10s football team. But if there’s one context where smoking should be legal, it’s the beer garden and the outside bit of a club. By this point, it’s no longer even a smokers vs non-smokers issue. These measures would oppress us all. It’s time for occasional social smokers to stand in solidarity with our more committed friends: after all the fags they’ve tapped us over the years, it’s the least that we owe them.

Who doesn’t love accepting the offer of a rollie on a sultry summer’s night with a “oh, go on then” grin? Who has never used smoking as a pretext to flirt with someone they met inside a club? How else do you even get with someone on a night out? What about those of us who are mediocre dancers but fabulous conversationalists who have mastered the art of seductively waving around a Camel Blue? I guess we’ll just die alone – thanks a lot, Mr Starmer!

It’s not just about making it harder to get laid. Even worse, Labour is hell-bent on destroying one of our most sacred social institutions: the deep, overly-revealing chat with a stranger outside a club. You could tell a random person your deepest traumas and most radical beliefs without a cigarette at hand, but it’s just not going to hit the same. All of those spontaneous intimacies will be lost forever, which in the midst of a ‘loneliness epidemic’ is the last thing we need. 

I’m not going to come out swinging in defence of smoking. It’s a deadly addiction which I quit for a reason and I find it somewhat embarrassing when people insist that it’s actually really edgy and cool (some of the most evil profit-making corporations on the planet thank you for your service.) But these proposals express something punitive and mean-spirited about Starmer’s Labour: instead of improving our lives in any way that matters, it’s an approach based on taking away small pleasures and forcing us to be better behaved through the force of the law. Really, it should be none of Keir Starmer’s business whether adults choose to light up outside a pub.

Smoking rates are already steadily decreasing in the UK, but there remains significant socio-economic disparities in who becomes addicted and who does not (smokers are disproportionately likely to live in deprived areas). It doesn’t look like Labour will be tackling these problems any time soon, so drawing up new rules and banning things is the easier, cheaper option, even if this makes Britain a more miserable place. Well, I say “no.” I’m going to become the Gandhi of social smoking. If Labour want to take away my twice-a-year twenty deck, they’ll have to prise it from my cold, dead hands.