Perhaps we should not be too surprised. There has long been a puritanical streak to socialism – combined with the insufferable hypocrisy of socialists taking a more indulgent approach to their own arrangements.
Just as Keir Starmer has Lord Alli, Karl Marx was given generous financial support, during his time in London, by the mill owner Friedrich Engels. Marx had trouble keeping within budget and would write asking for more money:
The piano chap, who is being paid in instalments for the piano, should already have had £6 at the end of June, and is a most ill-mannered brute…The wretched school fees – some £10 – I have fortunately been able to pay, for I do my utmost to spare the children direct humiliation.
The correspondence was enlivened by the odd racist and anti-semitic slur to avoid them being pure begging letters. Those frock coats needed to be paid for somehow. Without having to earn a living, Marx could get on with outlining his prospectus for a grim egalitarian future enforced by a brutal totalitarianism.
Even democratic socialists have displayed killjoy tendencies. Tony Blair’s Labour Government outlawed fox hunting. In animal welfare terms, it was absurd since controlling the fox population was still allowed and from the fox’s point of view, being trapped, poisoned or shot would mean a slower and more painful death than being ripped to pieces by hounds within seconds. But it was never about the fox. It was about people dressing up and enjoying themselves in a traditional pursuit. Blair could be pretty sanctimonious – while happy enough to cadge the odd free holiday from Silvio Berlusconi.
Still, at least Blair and his courtiers had a keener sense of what they could get away with and knew how to offer a message that was upbeat and avoided blatant contradictions. The brazenness of Keir Starmer and his cabinet colleagues in snaffling any luxury freebies going, while imposing misery on the rest of us, has not gone unnoticed.
When Starmer arrived in Downing Street in July, he announced that in future the Government would ‘tread more lightly on your lives’. But in his speech this week to the Labour Party Conference, he said: ‘Markets don’t give you control – that is almost literally their point.’ ‘So if you want a country with more control,’ he continued, then a ‘more decisive government’. It was trying to adapt the Brexit slogan ‘take back control’. To offer people ‘more control in their lives’.
That contortion of language gives the opposite of the normally understood meaning. To take back control would surely mean people have more control of their lives rather than in their lives. That they have control over the decisions they make and how they spend their money rather than the state taking control from them. When Starmer says markets ‘don’t give you control’, what is he referring to? The state or the individual? He must mean collective control through government. That means each person has less control over choices in life. You can favour more government control. Or for the government to ‘tread more lightly on your lives’. It’s difficult to see how you can have both.
Labour might suppose their authoritarian zeal captures the zeitgeist. The lockdown had huge popular support – according to the opinion polls at the time. Labour was always calling for it to last for longer and to be more severe. Part of it involved closing the pubs on the grounds that it was ‘unnecessary’ to go to them. The pubs were already struggling and have continued to do so since. Around 50 are closing each month.
This is the context in which the Government is itching to go to war on pubs. It is reported that Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is considering increasing alcohol duty in the Budget. The Government is consulting on banning smoking in pub gardens. A tax on beer bottles is planned as part of the drive to Net Zero.
We even had a suggestion this week from Andrew Gwynne, the public health minister, speaking at the Labour Conference, of reducing pub opening hours. ‘These are discussions that we have got to have – even if it’s just about tightening up on some of the hours of operation; particularly where there are concerns that people are drinking too much,’ he said. The Government has since distanced itself from this particular proposal. But the hostile intentions are clear. Gwynne does not believe in lifestyle choice. Rather than us having ownership of our own bodies, he feels that we are human units in the giant collective machine. Banishing the pub is way of improving the stats of human capital for the greater good.
It is especially ironic from a Labour government given the central role the pub has traditionally played in working class culture. I doubt Blair is a great fan of pubs – he probably regards them as old-fashioned and grubby. But even with his zeal for a new Britain, he didn’t set out to destroy them. His Government liberalised the licensing laws.
It so happens that left to make our own choices, we do tend to show concern for our health. As societies become richer, the diet becomes healthier, as do working conditions. Obesity is more prevalent among the poor than the rich in our country. Air pollution has been falling for decades as modern motor cars have replaced old bangers. So economic growth rather than nannying campaigns and regulatory interference is the most effective way to advance public health.
What about mental health? Does Gwynne not understand the contribution that pubs make to community spirit and combatting loneliness?
These practical arguments are important. But so too is the point of principle: My body, my choice. If I want to go to the pub then it should not be for Commissar Gwynne to stop me.
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