One of the worst things about campaign groups being funded by the government is that the campaigning never ends. Grassroots pressure groups eventually get tired or run out of money or decide that enough is enough. There comes a time when voluntary activists want to get back to their day job. For the state-funded lobbyist, however, activism is their day job and they must always find new dragons to slay. Combine this with the mentality of what C. S. Lewis called the omnipotent moral busybody and you have someone who will “torment us without end”.
The hateful and vindictive pressure group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), which has relieved taxpayers of millions of pounds since its inception in 1971, is staffed by such people. At their request, the government is currently legislating for the gradual prohibition of tobacco, but ASH are not the types to let the grass grow under their feet. No sooner had politicians capitulated to their last unreasonable demand before they were back for more.
People who do YouGov polls seem to be a particularly joyless and intolerant bunch
When the French government announced a ban on outdoor smoking “where there are children” on Friday, ASH immediately commissioned a poll from YouGov to test the water in Britain. People who do YouGov polls seem to be a particularly joyless and intolerant bunch. In November 2022, when COVID-19 was a fading memory and Rishi Sunak was Prime Minister, 61 per cent of respondents to a YouGov poll wanted the government to force people to wear face masks on public transport and 20 per cent wanted to bring back the “rule of six”. Two-thirds of respondents to another YouGov poll said they preferred staying in to going out. Half of them want to ban vapes completely and a third of them are teetotallers, as compared to a fifth of the general public.
It did not come as a huge surprise, therefore, when the survey ASH commissioned found that 59 per cent of the misanthropic hermits who complete YouGov polls want to see smoking banned outside pubs and restaurants, including in beer gardens. In other words, they want smoking banned in designated smoking areas. This contradicted another YouGov poll, conducted on the same day, which found that only 32 per cent of respondents thought that there were “too few restrictions on where people can smoke”, but surveys are notoriously sensitive to the way questions are framed. Nevertheless, Peter Kellner, the former president of YouGov who used to sit on the board of ASH, was cock-a-hoop and wrote an article for The Grocer in which he celebrated the tyranny of the majority. “The public is not crying out for libertarian heroics”, he gloated. “While 56% of smokers oppose the measure, only 13% of adults now smoke.”
Well, that’s alright then, isn’t it? It’s only the people who will be adversely affected by the ban who are opposed to it, and they’re a small minority so who cares?
Kellner says that the YouGov poll shows that “38% of adults would be more likely to visit smoke-free outdoor spaces, compared with just 18% who say they’d be less likely.” This is exactly the kind of lie non-smokers told pollsters before the 2007 smoking ban. Thousands of derelict pubs are testimony to the fact that talk is cheap. If you tell a pollster that you want to ban smoking in beer gardens, you are pretty much obliged to say that you would visit beer gardens more often if smoking were banned. But it is worth remembering that when 61 per cent of YouGov respondents claimed to want mask mandates on public transport, no more than 1 per cent of people on public transport were wearing face masks. This shows that the respondents were either hypocrites or that they didn’t use public transport. Either way, their opinions were worthless and the government was right to ignore them.
You almost have to respect the 21 per cent who want smoking banned outdoors but don’t even pretend that it would make them more likely to go to the pub. They’re probably teetotallers who prefer staying at home, like so many YouGov punters. Those who work in the pub trade have learned not to take the stated preferences of such people seriously and, having had their fingers burnt in 2007, are in no mood to placate anti-smoking fanatics again. A survey of pub operators conducted last year found that 85 per cent of pub operators are opposed to outdoor smoking bans. It is possible that they know more about consumer demand than Peter Kellner and ASH.
Back in 2004, the musician Joe Jackson made the shrewd observation that smokers are “the only minority who are not only abused but whose minority status is quoted as justification for abuse”. It seems to be Kellner’s sole justification. He does not claim that smoking in the open air poses any risk to bystanders. Unlike the French government, he doesn’t bring ‘the children’ into it. He doesn’t need to. Only a few million people smoke these days and most people don’t like smoking. That is enough for the likes of him and he hopes it will be enough for the government.
This is the kind of thing John Stuart Mill had in mind when he coined the term “tyranny of the majority” in 1859. It is the government’s role to protect minorities from the shifting sands of public opinion, not to pick up pitchforks and join the mob. We do not use questionable surveys to decide what we have for breakfast for the simple reason that it is no one else’s business. Similarly, whether a pub allows customers to use its smoking shelter is not something to be decided by a show of hands from people who don’t live in the area, don’t smoke, don’t drink, and don’t go to pubs. If we are to retain the remnants of a free society, we need to remember that there are very many issues that could become targets of public policy that are simply none of the government’s business.
