What has Rishi Sunak been smoking? Following his first Conservative conference speech as Prime Minister he has certainly given grounds to believe he’s been on something mind-altering.

Panned widely, including by typically Conservative-supporting media, instead of rallying his party in a united campaign to remain in power he ignited new disputes that raise the existential question, “what really is the Tory Party for?”

All he needed to do was show sincere conservative credentials, appeal for unity and take the attack to Labour, and yet his chief policy announcement was to question his party’s commitment to individual freedom and accepting personal responsibility – both core values the abandonment of which will disillusion yet more past and potential supporters. In so doing, Sunak continues to salami-slice the Conservatives’ very reason for existence and any practical offering.

Not being Labour is eventually not going to be enough for too many people who will conclude Labour cannot be any worse and in some respects might be better.

The idea of banning the sale of tobacco products – essentially cigarettes, but including cigars and pipes too – to those not yet allowed to smoke, starting with those born after 2008 – and for that ban to rise a further year every year until no one alive is able to purchase tobacco, is the type of idea more likely to spring from George Orwell’s 1984 or Huxley’s Brave New World than from any Conservative manifesto.

But then it was not in the Tory manifesto and, like Sunak himself, has never obtained the approval of the electorate.

No, this is a policy idea Sunak aides admit to testing privately using polling and focus groups to see if it might be popular. Apparently 64 per cent of those asked thought it was a good idea and this rose to 71 per cent among Conservative voters. That is no shock to me, with only 13 per cent of adults now smoking the real surprise is the figures in favour were not over 80 per cent.

The policy is ostensibly neat, because it “only” bans the supply of tobacco to those not yet legally old enough to smoke or vote (so nobody with that right is losing it) – and it will not take place until 2027 at the earliest. But it is also too clever by half, for many friends or close relations – any of whom as time advances will still be allowed to purchase a tobacco product legally – say, a 38-year-old – could be willing to buy it for a 37-year-old for whom it is banned. This will carry on for a period of 70 or so years as people move through the decades of their adult lives.

The result will undoubtedly be more contraband filling the market demand and more law-breaking will take place as a result – all to the benefit of organised crime gangs. The policy will grow to become an expensive logistical and security nightmare – deflecting scarce resources that could be better used for health treatments. The sale of cannabis is banned for all yet we can smell it in the streets – tobacco will go the same way and be pushed to kids.

The policy is justified by claiming that smoking costs the NHS £17bn – more than the £10bn tax receipts tobacco brings in, and that the huge number of cancer deaths must be reduced. The figures are, however, highly contestable. The £17bn is a modelled gross “cost” that includes lost productivity and GDP activity through smokers’ illness, but it is not the true net cost as it does not include the savings to the NHS and wider state of less care required in later years of life, welfare payments and pension that average smokers might enjoy but never draw down. (It is also £10bn less than the £27bn modelled cost of obesity.)

How then can the policy be policed? I have no doubts this will come down to the abolition of cash transactions in the next ten years and the use of programmable currency linked to our identities that at the very least must include our age (a minimum requirement). It is then only a very short step to banning the sale of all tobacco-based products at presentation of the cashless ID payment.

It is, of course also another step for the ban or rationing of other lifestyle choices such as alcohol, high sugar and salt content foods, eventually most meats, fuels, unapproved boilers and discretionary travel. First Sunak will come for an already shrinking minority of smokers, but have no doubt the easy utility of controlling what we can pay for will attract future politicians to come for others.

How else will authorities – not always the police, but including new public health wardens and environmental counsellors – save the NHS or the planet from our selfish approach to living our lives with some modicum of pleasure – or not freezing to death?

All this for a policy that is simply not needed. Smoking rates have been falling through the floor and are now at 13 per cent of the adult population – and far lower for young people who appear no longer that keen on smoking. The introduction of vapes has had a significant impact on both rates – and yet, despite their unanswerable success – they too are now facing further bans. This will only drive people back into smoking tobacco. Sunak’s policy is incoherent, if not nuts.

All-in-all, Sunak’s latest Blairite policy offering – tested to poll well, sounding caring but absent of understanding how humans behave, is like traversing the Niagara Falls on a cable using a monocycle. Sunak deserves to fall into the political abyss.

If Rishi Sunak believes this policy is so clever, so good for us, so beneficial in the long term, then he should seek permission from the King for a General Election and put it to the country now. I for one would not give him my endorsement.

Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments and editor of Thinkscotland.org

Political abyss beckons as desperate Rishi Sunak goes up in smoke - Brian Monteith

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